Chapter 11: Health Information Technology

Information technology is critical to universal health coverage. During its preparatory period, Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) already listed information systems as key infrastructure. The digitalization of the medical field was promoted gradually, including the issue of NHI IC cards. Over the past 20 years, information technology has become an important pillar in Taiwan’s NHI operations.

The information technology field has what is known as Moore's Law. This states that the computing power of integrated circuits doubles approximately once every 18 months, whereas the price simultaneously shrinks by 50%. When Taiwan's implemented its NHI scheme over 20 years ago, the hardware of information systems was limited in performance and extremely expensive in comparison to today's. Because the directions taken by the planners were correct and thanks to the continued promotion of executives, Taiwan has become an excellent example internationally for the use of health IT to support universal health coverage.