Skip to Content

Incentives for Docs to go Digital

Right now, the major beneficiaries are insurers, not physicians.
September 26, 2008

Only about 15 percent of physicians in the United States are using electronic health records (EHR), a statistic that John Halamka, chief information officer and dean for technology at Harvard Medical School, aims to change.

During a panel discussion at Technology Review’s EmTech conference earlier this week, Halamka outlined the major barrier in getting physicians to adopt these systems: misaligned incentives. While EHRs should ultimately reduce costs, doctors must spend $40,000 to $50,000 to buy an EHR system, and they lose 20 percent of their productivity in the first few months. And, at the end of the day, insurers and payers rather than physicians reap the rewards, Halamka said. His thoughts echo those of Karen Bell, another panelist who spoke with Technology Review.

Halamka, who is also chief information officer of the CareGroup Health System, described how his company took the digital leap: it mandated that academic affiliates, and eventually other affiliates, use EHRs. To ease the burden, Caregroup subsidized the cost of the systems and provided a training team for physicians.

Halamka will outline his prescription for broader adoption of EHRs in a letter to the incoming president, which will be published in the next issue of Technology Review.

For Halamka’s perspective on Healthcare IT and beyond, check out his blog, “Life as a Healthcare CTO.”

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.