Information Technology Conduit as a Portal to Circumvent the Graveyard Shift

Information technology (IT) with increasingly faster rates of data transfer is anticipated to continue to shape the practice of medicine in the future. Such changes in health information technology coincide with our rapidly evolving understanding of sleep deprivation and circadian disturbances and their consequent effects on health, performance of the medical provider, and the commission of medical errors. This commentary aims to update the reader of the changes in these two bodies of knowledge and explicate how they may dovetail for the mutual benefit of the patient and the provider. We will also explore some of the impediments to the transfer of health IT data and present a viewpoint of how such issues may need to be addressed and by which parties.