There was some encouraging news for the health IT sector in recent days with two interesting reports showing growth in HIT adoption and usage.

Jason Mitchell, MD, a technology expert with the American Academy of Family Physicians told the group’s Scientific Assembly that AAFP doctors have passed the stage of discussing health IT adoption and implementation and are now more concerned about how to deploy technology to optimally benefit their practices. Dr. Mitchell said at least 40 percent of AAFP docs are using EHRs and that another 11 percent are in the process of adopting them. Granted, Dr. Mitchell also reported that the doctors are having a hard time seeing the value proposition in health IT and are skeptical about ROI, but these numbers are certainly encouraging.

The research firm Datamonitor released a report earlier this month indicating that while IT budgets in general are getting smaller, the trend isn’t true for health IT. In fact, health care is planning to spend more on IT in the coming year. The downturn in overall IT spending isn’t that great a surprise, as IT spending has been declining in recent years. But it’s obviously very encouraging on many levels that health IT isn’t following suit.

Clearly more and more people are seeing the value of technology in health care. And this comes in the face of what are some of the most troubling economic conditions we’ve seen in many years. That bodes quite well for our industry but by no means is this the time to claim victory. We still have a very long way to and a lot more work to do. Maybe the change of administration in Washington in a few months can give our efforts a boost. At any rate, it’s very nice to see that the work we’ve done to this point is paying dividends. A little positive reinforcement is always welcome.