Sharing Information and Controlling Costs in the Healthcare Industry

In the early 1990s, the United States attempted to institute a universal healthcare system, an initiative that drew attention to the need to control costs, reduce duplicative testing, and provide high-quality patient care throughout a patient's lifetime. As physician practice models began to evolve to meet the nation's challenge, the need to migrate to a better information infrastructure that encouraged information sharing and cost control became apparent. A joint venture of companies and nonprofit institutions, led by the Koop Foundation, Inc., attempted to develop the best information and process management models to share healthcare information and control costs. By building a set of healthcare domain analysis tools, the joint venture hoped to design information systems for industry-wide use that would overcome the existing problems of fragmented information and lack of cost awareness.