Why Health Informatics?

The United States has one of the highest costs of healthcare in the world. In 2021, U.S. healthcare spending reached $4.3 trillion. A significant proportion of the cost goes to service administrative overhead and not directly to the provision of care. It is also the case that about 80% of the people in the nation's patient pool do not have electronic health records. Experts believe that by applying information technology more effectively cost of care can be reduced and quality of care can be improved. Hence, there is a strong push now at many levels in our society for smarter usage of IT and engaging IT personnel in health care. These are the broad motivating factors for the Health Information technology focus of the Carolina Health Informatics Program (CHIP) at UNC.