History of Health Information Technology

To give the reader a broad understanding of health information technology (HIT) and its roots let us begin with the first attempt at using a computer to document patient information. In 1966, at the University of Wisconsin, the first computer was used to record medical history. Unfortunately, the amount of machinery required and the limited capacity of software quickly ended the project. (Lehmann et al., 2006) Approximately at the same time Morris Collen was also leading a project to process patient records electronically for the medical group Kaiser Permanente. By 1971 he had some success and more than one million patient records were stored in the Kaiser Permanente database. (Lehmann et al., 2006) While many people may think of information technology as a relatively new addition to the field of medicine it is clear that implementation of IT has been developing for over forty years.