Health Information Technology (health IT [0]) has been widely touted as a crucial tool to help improve the health care system. According to the Institute of Medicine "the development of an information technology infrastructure has enormous potential to improve the safety, quality, and efficiency of health care in the United States." President Bush has called for greater use of health IT to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors. However, health care providers' adoption of health IT has been limited due to various factors. The challenge persists of devising strategies to promote broader adoption and more effective use of health IT.

Health IT [0] is a phrase that refers to a wide range of electronic or computerized tools that can be used in the delivery and administration of health care services. Common types of health IT include Electronic Medical or Health Records (EMR [0]/EHR [0]), Computerized Physician Order Entry [0] (CPOE [0]), and E-prescribing [0]. Health Information Exchange [0] (HIE [0]) projects, including Regional Health Information Organizations [0] (RHIOs [0]), enable providers to electronically access and share patient information from a variety of sources in order to deliver better patient care.

Health IT can improve the quality of care and patient safety, but these systems can also create new types of errors that need to be monitored. Implementation of health IT and HIE also raises important policy issues, such as how to best maintain the privacy and security of patients' health care information. New York State has been a leader in funding health IT and HIE projects [0], and has supported other initiatives to evaluate health IT and HIE projects [0] and to address key privacy and security issues [0].