Small and medium-sized technology businesses have the expertise, knowledge and skill sets to help the U.S. healthcare industry advance its use of new IT tools, but barriers may keep many of them on the sidelines, according to a new CompTIA white paper, “Health IT: The Essential Role of Small IT Solution Providers”.

The paper focuses on opportunities to increase participation by IT solution providers, including:

• Providing additional re-training options that focus on health IT,


• Integrating IT solution providers into the activities of Regional Extension Centers (RECs) and


• Making data breach laws less burdensome for small IT solution providers.
  Health IT continues to provide significant potential for increasing the quality of patient care in the U.S.  However, trends indicate that small medical providers are hesitant to move forward for a variety of reasons, including concerns about health IT limiting resources and medical staff and the difficulty in achieving the “meaningful use” standard.

At the same time, small IT solution providers are facing difficulties in participating in the health IT transition.

As the white paper outlines, policies seeking to advance the health IT transition should consider small medical providers and small IT solution providers as a partnership. Burdening medical providers with managing a health IT transition alone takes away focus from their patients. Partnering with IT solution providers can ease that transition and allow medical providers to spend more resources focusing on their patients.