To transform healthcare, it's high time that providers adopt the same practices economically healthy industries do--and that includes automating processes whenever possible. To date, however, the healthcare industry isn't up to snuff when it comes to health IT adoption, says Harvard economics professor David Cutler.

Cutler, who spoke at the HIT Symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes that most industries have found ways to cut out paperwork by implementing IT solutions. In healthcare, on the other hand, there's countless missed opportunities for automation. For example, nurses spend far too much time printing digital information and hand-entering the data into other systems.

EMRs, in particular, can do a lot to eliminate wasted administrative effort, Cutler says. Three key areas where they offer great promise include simplifying billing by streamlining claims processing; decreasing errors through decision support; and mining clinical data to determine which processes are working.

To hear more from Cutler:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece