The US federal government's healthcare IT spending is set to increase by $2 billion between 2011 and 2016, according to a recent report by the research arm of Deltek. The firm found that 2011 spending hit about $4.5 billion and it will grow to $6.5 billion by 2016, marking an increasing of 7.5 percent CAGR. The report also found that overall federal healthcare expenditures will almost double from $766 billion in 2011 to $1.4 trillion in 2020. Health IT investments are seen as one way to help curb those costs.

Deltek's senior principal analyst Angie Petty told InformationWeek that the demand for mobile access to medical records has also increased along with a growing demand for mobile health applications.

The increased spending on health IT will largely focus on electronic health records systems, IT infrastructure modernization, new payment systems, and IT related to population health management. Much of the spend will go toward modernizing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) systems in a move toward new payment models as well as to reduce fraud.

"It is Deltek's belief that implementation of health IT will ultimately lower healthcare costs and expenditures while at the same time, improving population health," Petty told InformationWeek. "The federal government will continue to push health IT within its own agencies and to states, localities, and commercial providers."