Using Health IT to Improve the Health Care Experience

Overview: How health IT can improve your health care experience

Health care practices across the country are seeing the benefits of health information technology (IT) implementation on patient engagement in the form of better patient outcomes and lower costs. The rewards are real:

  • More informed, better involved patients
  • More effective, safer delivery of care
  • Increased efficiencies for practice staff

Health care consumers and/or patients will most likely experience health IT in their office visits through their provider’s EHR. The EHR is an electronic version of the old paper chart.

Patients and consumers may also interact with health IT through new and innovative technologies like telehealth and wearable devices like a Fitbit or Apple watch. These technologies are developing quickly and bring more information and convenience to accessing and improving health.

Health IT Stories: Listen to Dave deBronkart’s story about the benefits of health IT.

For more information on using different kinds of health IT, continue reading this page.

Source: ONC, Patient Engagement Playbook (opens external link)

Strategies for using health IT

This section of the website introduces several tools for health care consumers and professionals to leverage health IT. Read below to learn four strategies for making better decisions with better information:

Strategy 1: get access to records online

Read the tips below, according to your perspective, for increasing portal access:

Strategy 2: explore additional tools that meet your needs

Read the tips below, according to your perspective, for how to use health IT to interact and educate:

Strategy 3: use secure messaging and notes to communicate

Read the tips below, according to your perspective, for expanding clear and convenient patient-provider communications:

Strategy 4: find out more about how telehealth is used

Read the tips below, according to your perspective, for using remote delivery of health care services and capturing and integrating nonclinical data into a health record:

Related pages

Have a question? Send us an email at eHealth@wi.gov.

Last revised April 28, 2025