HEALTH-CARE REFORM - A NATIONAL CASE-STUDY

Information technology (IT) is essential to reform in contemporary health care and other complex, vulnerable systems. The barriers to using IT in such systems are poorly understood by policy makers and by the computing and communications community. Thus current reform efforts have met with only limited success. This paper uses a case study, the United States health care system, to illustrate the challenges to the computing and communications community, as the community plans for its key role in future health care systems.