Dr. David Blumenthal, the former national coordinator for health information technology, described the eventual success of the EHR incentive program as inevitable, citing the overwhelming benefits of the technology in a recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Blumenthal wrote that the various aspects of the HITECH Act, including the incentive payments and the availability of consulting services through Regional Extension Centers, have made it much more attractive for physicians to adopt EHR systems.

Still, he recognized some challenges remain to accomplishing the ultimate goals of the government's technology efforts. Most importantly, the issue of interoperability must be dealt with in order to encourage the free exchange of EHRs.

This obstacle aside, Blumenthal expects the future to be bright for health IT. This is largely because a majority of new physicians see the benefits of a networked healthcare system.

"Perhaps the most convincing reason for the inevitability of the vision of the HITECH Act is that the next generation of clinicians, weaned on the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, the iPad and the iPhone, will insist that the United States find its way to an interoperable, private, secure and modern electronic health information system," Blumenthal wrote.