For several years now, information technology (IT) has been hailed as an innovation that will revolutionize medicine and health care more generally. Yet adoption of new IT in the healthcare sector has been slow, possibly reflecting a lack of interest. In economic terms, the incentives of the major players in health care may work against new IT, which fosters process and organizational innovation much more than product innovation. While product innovation causes an increase in consumers’ willingness to pay and is therefore welcomed by those working in the healthcare sector, process innovation is resisted because it often means performing the same service but at a lower cost. This is also true of organizational innovation, which frequently entails vertical integration and hence a loss of autonomy (as evidenced by the difficulties of creating Managed Care Organizations). The objective of this paper therefore is to predict the circumstances in which (both current and potential) patients, physicians, hospitals, health insurers, and governments are likely to support innovation in health care through IT.

几年来，信息技术 (IT) 一直被誉为将更广泛地彻底改变医学和医疗保健的创新。然而，医疗保健行业采用新 IT 的速度很慢，这可能反映了缺乏兴趣。从经济角度来看，医疗保健领域主要参与者的激励措施可能与新 IT 相悖，后者更能促进流程和组织创新，而不是产品创新。虽然产品创新会提高消费者的支付意愿，因此受到医疗保健行业从业人员的欢迎，但流程创新却遭到抵制，因为它通常意味着以更低的成本提供相同的服务。组织创新也是如此，这通常需要垂直整合，因此失去自主权（正如创建管理式护理组织的困难所证明的那样）。因此，本文的目的是预测（当前和潜在）患者、医生、医院、健康保险公司和政府可能通过 IT 支持医疗保健创新的情况。