The body of knowledge on the benefits of Health Information Exchange (HIE) services primarily consists of studies that are conducted on HIEs in the US. The important legal and economic differences between the US market and the rest of the world, significantly reduce the generalizability of the current insights on HIEs. In this research we intend to examine if the HIE adoption and usage would lead to substantial changes in resource utilization in settings outside of the US, hence improving the generalizability and external validity of the literature on HIE effectiveness. We conducted a longitudinal study of all medical providers in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates between January 2019, and May 2022. Using HIE system log data, and insurance claims data we implemented Difference-in-Differences models to estimate the impact of HIE adoption reducing utilization of laboratory and pathology, and radiology imaging services as well as surgery procedures at both individual clinician and hospital levels. We further implemented panel data regression models to estimate the gradual increase in the benefits of HIE for users. On average, at the hospital level, adoption of HIE services has resulted in 24.7% reduction in pathology and laboratory orders, and 11.2% reduction in radiology imaging. At the clinician level, on average, HIE adoption leads to 7.8% reduction in pathology and laboratory orders, and 5.6% reduction in surgery procedures. These reductions are relative to the predicted increase in outcomes which would have occurred had the HIE not been implemented. We also show that the benefits of HIE happens gradually over time and as users gain more experience with the HIE, they observe better results. While our findings are consistent with the prior literature and show that HIE adoption significantly reduces the utilization of medical services, we uncover that the magnitude of these savings are different from those in the US.

关于健康信息交换 (HIE) 服务益处的知识体系主要包括在美国针对 HIE 进行的研究。美国市场与世界其他地区之间的重要法律和经济差异，大大降低了当前 HIE 见解的普遍性。在这项研究中，我们打算研究 HIE 的采用和使用是否会导致美国以外地区资源利用的重大变化，从而提高 HIE 有效性文献的普遍性和外部有效性。我们对 2019 年 1 月至 2022 年 5 月期间阿拉伯联合酋长国阿布扎比的所有医疗提供者进行了纵向研究。使用 HIE 系统日志数据和保险索赔数据，我们实施了双重差分模型来估计采用 HIE 减少的影响在个体临床医生和医院层面利用实验室和病理学、放射成像服务以及手术程序。我们进一步实施面板数据回归模型来估计 HIE 为用户带来的好处的逐渐增加。平均而言，在医院层面，采用 HIE 服务使病理和实验室订单减少了 24.7%，放射成像减少了 11.2%。在临床医生层面，平均而言，采用 HIE 可使病理和实验室订单减少 7.8%，手术程序减少 5.6%。这些减少是相对于如果不实施 HIE 的话预计结果的增加而言的。我们还表明，随着时间的推移，HIE 的好处逐渐显现，并且随着用户获得更多的 HIE 经验，他们会观察到更好的结果。虽然我们的研究结果与之前的文献一致，并且表明 HIE 的采用显着降低了医疗服务的利用率，但我们发现这些节省的幅度与美国不同。