This study by the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine includes findings and recommendations for transfoming the health care delivery system from a conglomeration of of independent individual practitioners, group practices, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, community health centers, and so on, into a high-performance, efficient system. The report identifies opportunities and challenges to using systems engineering, information technologies, and other systems tools to create a health care system that delivers safe, effective, timely, patient-centered, efficient, equitable health care. The report argues for a strong partnership between engineers and health care professionals to address the profound quality and cost crises facing the current system. This is followed by detailed descriptions of systems design, analysis, and control tools that could lead to a better understanding of health care processes and system interactions and, ultimately, to improved health care at all levels (patient, care team, health care organization, and the regulatory and financial environment); each description includes suggested applications for the health care delivery system. The report also describes in detail how information and communications technologies can facilitate information flow, connectivity, and coordinated, patient-centered health care. In addition to the committee's consensus report, the published volume includes 38 individually authored papers based on presentations given at three fact-finding workshops. The papers address not operational challenges confronting the U.S. health care delivery system, as well as opportunities for using information technology, including biosensors and wireless communications, remote monitoring, and systems engineering (e.g., human factors engineering, financial engineering, supply-chain management, and modeling and simulation).