Healthcare is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in human beings. Information and communications technologies (ICTs) can play a critical role in improving health care for individuals and communities. ICTs also provide the capacity to improve health system efficiencies and prevent medical errors. It involves "the application of information processing involving both computer hardware and software that deals with the storage, retrieval, sharing, and use of health care information, data, and knowledge for communication and decision making."

Computers and communications attributes can be networked to build systems for moving health information. Informatics is yet another integral aspect of IT. Applications can include components like Electronic Health Record (EHR), Electronic Medical Record (EMR), Personal Health Record (PHR), Medical Practice Management software (MPM), Health Information Exchange (HIE) and many more. There are multiple purposes for the use of IT within the health care industry. Further, the use of IT is expected to improve the quality of health care, reduce medical errors and health care costs to improve health care service efficiency