Economic evaluation in medical information technology: why the numbers don't add up.

Standards for the economic evaluation of medical technologies were instituted in the mid-1990s, yet little is known about their application in medical information technology studies. In a review of evaluation studies published between 1982 and 2002, we found that the volume and variety of economic evaluations had increased. However, investigators routinely omitted key cost or effectiveness elements in their designs, resulting in publications with incomplete, and potentially biased, economic findings.