Applying IT to Healthcare: Humans, Errors, and a Data Quality Perspective

Dramatic applications of information technology to healthcare have promised reduced medical errors and costs in the healthcare system. Much attention has focused on continuing to develop new applications, the features of the applications themselves, and the adoption of these applications. The questions of errors and costs in the health care system still persist. In this paper, we take a data and information quality perspective to redirect the question and the focus. This paper focuses on the errors, the data underlying these errors, and potential sources of these errors. We provide new concepts derived from integrating the areas of healthcare, cognitive science, behavioral science, and data quality. We further provide specific templates that can be used to facilitate organizations in reducing and avoiding the errors.