An empirical study of healthcare providers and patients' perceptions of electronic health records.

This paper is the result of a legal and policy analysis of a statistical poll focused on the area of Livorno conducted by the LIDER-Lab of the Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna (Pisa, Italy). Information were gathered by submitting questionnaires to both healthcare providers and their patients. The scope was to evaluate the interest engendered by the application of technology on health data processing along with the needs, expectations and concerns of patients and healthcare providers. The paper leads to the main policy proposals of increasing financial investments in e-health (or at least preserve this area from the generalized budget constraints public health is suffering nowadays) and introducing incentives to use computers for general practitioners.