Abstract

The world is facing many challenges connected with the need to increase health care effectiveness globally. One of the reasons behind the need to improve and optimise healthcare systems is change in the population age structure, which manifests as an increase in the elderly population of the compared to the population before and of productive age. It is thus absolutely necessary to find technical and organisational means to increase the effectiveness of health care, as well as optimise it and reduce the associated costs. Implementing information technologies in health care systems is now an absolute necessity, mainly due to the systematically growing amount of information on patient’s health status, number of diagnosable diseases and implementable treatments, diversity of pharmaceuticals and their effects, as well as the need to store and update this kind of data.The analysis presented in this work deals with issues and problems concerning health care systems in developed countries, including Poland. It was carried out on the basis of the authors’ research experience in analysing IT systems suppoiting the Polish health care system, gained by participating in the implementation of several projects, backed with direct contact with experts, mainly from the Scandinavian countries and the USA, who were involved in the development of information technologies to be used in health care systems in those countries, and an analysis of materials and experts’ reports available in the literature and online.

Key words:

information technologies in medicine, Guidelines, clinical pathways, computer-based decision support systems