For the past decade, my encounters with the health care system have typically involved nothing more than a routine checkup every two years. Last month it was very different — and very revealing about the shortcomings of our low-tech medical record-keeping system.

I spent five days in a hospital ICU and five days in a medical/surgical ward. I was diagnosed with acute, multi-lobar pneumonia, which required that a pulmonary and infectious disease consultant be called in, in addition to the ICU doctor and the staff in the regular ward. In 10 days I had seven chest X-rays, an ultrasound and daily blood tests. There were some unusual readings on the blood test the doctors said they wanted to monitor. Outside my hospital room was a large three-ring binder labeled "confidential" that accompanied me on the stretcher as I moved from one part of the hospital to another.

During my stay I was an "informed" patient, quizzing the nurse about every medication I was taking. I discovered that on shift change, one dose of an antibiotic was missed. When I told the nurse the next day, she admitted it had been overlooked. On discharge from the hospital, I was advised to schedule follow-up visits with the pulmonary specialist and my regular primary care physician.

I arrived at the pulmonary practice only to find there was no record of my hospital stay. I filled out a stack of forms, entering information about my meds and diagnosis. My copious notes during the hospitalization helped, but it was a huge waste of time nonetheless. Of course the doctor recognized me, performed his examination and scheduled another blood test.

A week later I went to see my primary care physician. I figured she might want to see the latest blood test results, so I called the pulmonary practice in the morning and asked them to send the results to her. She had a copy of the discharge summary from the hospital that had been faxed over but no record of who the pulmonologist was or of the blood test.

Again, I recounted my entire experience. Next time I have to see another specialist, I wonder what information I will be asked to provide.

Variations of this story are repeated thousands of times daily throughout the country in ERs, hospitals, specialist practices, primary care practices, long-term care facilities, community clinics, etc. We are handed from one expert to the next and ironically, we — the non-experts — are the information "links" that bind the care together. It is frightening to reflect on the number of places in this network where information can be forgotten, distorted or misinterpreted. It is worrisome to think about patients who are less vigilant in tracking their care than I was, or whose health literacy is low. And my treatment was in the very best of facilities with ample resources. It is terrifying to think of those needing their care coordinated in less privileged settings.

Now consider an admittedly utopian world with a safe, secure and private central repository where each health care encounter is validated and recorded. A repository that can be securely accessed by all the care providers so they know exactly what was done to the patient, when and by whom. Where the healing takes place in a "cloud" of accurate and up-to-date health information about each patient. Now that's a transformational idea!

The Obama administration has put a stake in the ground, saying we are going to use information technology to address cost and quality problems in health care reform. Now we just need to make sure it happens. The HITECH Act of 2009 proposes that by 2015, if doctors and hospitals want to avoid cuts to their reimbursements by Medicare and Medicaid — the two largest insurers, which collectively spent more than $800 billion in 2008 and accounted for 35 percent of U.S. health expenditures — they have to demonstrate "meaningful use" of health information technology.

So how do you get a uniform set of standards across the entire industry so that information technology is not a barrier to easy information exchange? The proposed National Health Information Network is one solution. But all of these changes will face significant inertia and resistance. The practice of medicine is steeped in centuries-old traditions of large paper files that will be difficult to overturn.

The carrots and sticks of HITECH notwithstanding, to make health care IT implementation a reality, we need payment reform as well. We must figure out the appropriate reimbursement mechanism, whether it's paying doctors to use information technology, asking patients to pay for these tools, or only reimbursing when medical care improves patients' conditions.

Today, we waste more than $1 billion a year just because of duplicative tests. The Institute of Medicine estimates that nearly 100,000 patients die in hospitals each year due to medical errors, and some of those are caused by the right information not being available at the point of care. Not only is the current system incredibly expensive because of inefficiencies, it is also costing lives. It's imperative that we figure out how to implement health care information technology now.

Ritu Agarwal is professor and Robert H. Smith Dean's Chair of Information Systems at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. She is founder and director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the Smith School and an international expert in the use of IT in health care settings. Her e-mail is ragarwal@rhsmith.umd.edu.