IT adoption triples in three years, but …

Health Management Technology, July, 2005

The number of physicians saying that information technology is essential to their medical practices tripled from only 114,000 in 2002 to more than 380,000 in 2005, according to Manhattan Research's fifth annual study of physician IT adoption trends. But, not all of the IT represents an individual's use of electronic medical records (EMRs).

Only about one in five physicians uses an EMR in his practice, a figure that hasn't changed much over the past four years, based on industry estimates. What has changed, though, is that physicians who use EMRs have begun to morph into power-users. In fact, they are five times more likely than non-EMR users to try additional technology such as e-prescribing, online consults and mobile computing devices.

The study, "Taking the Pulse v 5.0: Physicians and Emerging Information Technologies," was conducted between January and March, surveying a nationally representative sample of 1,208 U.S. practicing physicians.