An International Perspective on Health Information Exchange: Adoption in OECD Countries With Different Health Care System Configurations

Abstract

The sharing of information among various care providers is becoming an essential feature of health care systems, and many countries are now adopting policies to foster health information exchange, defined as the electronic transfer of data or information among health care organizations involved in the delivery of care. Given the increasing adoption of this type of policy in several Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, it is important to compare experiences from different countries, because policy adoption in one country can be explained more comprehensively and coherently through comparison with similar policies adopted in other nations. To make a more meaningful cross-country comparison, this article identifies a taxonomy of health systems, and it analyzes institutional and resource-based factors related to health information exchange adoption and how they differ in three main types of health systems: the National Health Service, social health insurance, and private health insurance.

Keywords: cross-country comparison; health information exchange; institutional theory; international health system comparison; resource-based view.