The role of ICT in the Italian health care system

The size of the Italian expenditure for the health care on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and on total public expenditure, is in line with those of the major industrialized countries, and somewhat lower than the European average. The Italian healthcare sector does not simply face a contraction of the expenditure: in effect, it should be highlighted that Italy currently does not spend “a lot” and, above all, invests “little” in the mentioned sector. Nevertheless, the health sector can be a very important flywheel for the economic recovery, provided that a lot of attention is paid, and the best resources are invested. In this work, the authors intend developing an analysis of the desirability of investment on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the health sector, and the consequent compatibility with current expenditure, by identifying at the outset the channels multipliers related to the resources at present allocated to the current health expenditure and capital account. For this analysis, two different simulation scenarios have been considered: in the first, an increase in Health services demand by Government has been studied, while in the second, an increase in final demand of Health services by Households has been considered. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.