Trouble in the Americas for electronic healthcare systems

Big IT projects in health have a poor track record, as anyone following the UK’s Connecting for Health project knows. On the other side of the Atlantic, we’ve seen the same hopeful enthusiasm for big IT projects, and the same disappointments are following.

Two recent news articles make for valuable reading here. Justin Hunter in Canada’s Globe and Mail describes the scandals in British Columbia and Ontario with their e-health systems. Read her article here. “Governments can get into a “bagful of trouble” when they rush to embrace technology they don’t really understand,” she writes.

Meanwhile, Fred Schulte in the Huffington Post discusses spiralling cost estimates in the US. Read his article here. A familiar story?