Dr. Caceres pointed the way towards the future role of IS in health care, to “implement
things useful to the physician in practice and spend medical information dollars in the
implementation of service systems for those practicing physicians currently taking care of
the increasing patient load.” His concern was that the then 6% burden of health care on the
GDP (now 14%) increased demands on physician diagnoses. He foresaw IS as providing an
important solution to the problem. Though great strides have been taken in this direction,
much remains to be done, since few of the available IS tools are easily integrated and many
physicians still rely on paper records and personal diagnostic skills. In fact, most of the IS
progress has occurred in three areas: Billing and administration, medical imaging, and clinical
laboratory work. To date, however, even these applications have suffered from proprietary
designs that limit electronic information sharing and integration.