A clinician's access to knowledge can spell the difference between life and death, an accurate or erroneous diagnosis, early intervention or a prolonged and costly stay in hospital. A health insurers' access to IT systems can help keep the lid on patient care costs and ease the strain on a public health system on the verge of crisis.

Barnard says the cost of diagnostic procedures will continue to soar without the application of technologies designed to make health care a more exact science. "And your quality of care is directly influenced at the same time because that is directly related to the quality of the information you have to manage that care. Those are the two main areas of cost - the diagnostic procedure and quality of care," he says. However with many hospital and health care executives educated at a time when computers weren't even on the horizon, information exchange between doctors, insurers, labs, pharmacies and hospitals is still mostly done on paper. Now some health care providers are starting to consider prescribing healthy doses of IT to unclog those blocked arteries and get information flowing through the system.