"IT products and services" is a very broad topic, so I will try and give you some background on the more commonly-used types of software and services in modern practices today. My experience is largely with practices and not with hospitals, just FYI:

Most practices primarily use 2 IT products to manage all of their work: a Practice Management system (which handles medical insurance billing, patient demographics, and oftentimes front-desk functions like scheduling) and an EHR or EMR (which handles the clinical workflows like charting, disease management, eprescribing, etc.). Many of the larger vendors in this space provide both PM & EHR, but it isn't uncommon for a practice to purchase these systems from separate vendors and then try and have an interface built between the two systems so that things like patient demographic data will automatically flow back and forth.

In the old days, a medical practice would usually hire an IT person or company who would come to their office and set up their computer network along with a dedicated server for their medical software to run on. Today, there is a trend in the market towards the adoption of cloud-based or saas software systems wherein the practice doesn't need much in the way of their own IT infrastructure, as the PM and EHR systems are hosted by their software vendors.

So the most common types of IT products, at least on the practice-level, are PM and EHR software systems. There is a free web-based EHR called Practice Fusion that you could actually sign up for online and play around with to get an idea of how these systems work. They are making a pretty big splash in the industry right now: www.practicefusion.com. Other PM and/or EHR companies that are major players who I have interacted with: www.advancedmd.com www.eclinicalworks.com www.nuemd.com

Or just do a Google search for "Electronic Health Records" or something like that.

While these are the main IT products that practices use, I'll also outline a few others you could look into: * Clearinghouse services: these are companies who handle EDI for a doctor's PM or billing software, so that the doctors can electronically send medical insurance claims to the insurance companies. Many PM/billing systems come with these services bundled in to the software. * e-prescribing: this is usually included as part of an EHR system, but some doctors who are still on paper charts will get a standalone eprescribing system which allows them to send electronic prescriptions to pharmacies. * PACS: PACS systems are used by Radiologists or other imaging specialties to manage the large high-res photos generated by X-ray, MRI, etc. (these photos are usually in a DICOM file format.) * E-fax: efaxing has been replacing paper faxing in offices of all kinds, and medical offices are no exception.
* Kiosk services: some doctors offices are moving to a kiosk style of check-in where you fill your info out at a computer terminal or via a tablet (check out Phreesia, a company that offers this service). * LIS: or Lab Information System, is a software used by medical laboratories to manage their lab testing work. Similar to an EHR system but for medical labs. * Reference Guides: check out Epocrates; they make apps that act as quick reference guides for docs at the point of care so that a doc could quickly consult a drugs known side effects, for example.
* Document Management: some practices have moved over to an electronic storage system for their paper charts. This is becoming less common now, IMO, because the EHR software usually takes over this function. * Outsourced billing services: many practices are contracting with outsourced billing firms to take over the back-end medical billing work. This is more of managed service as opposed to an IT service, but it is very relevant to everything else mentioned here. * Normal IT Services: while many modern practices are moving over to a cloud-based model for their mission-critical software tools, they still do usually have a general IT "guy" who can set them up with a new computer or fix their network. * Diagnostic Equipment: one thing I haven't mentioned is diagnostic equipment, like EKGs and the like. These machines can be set up to communicate their results into many of the major software vendors out there for tracking by the doctors.

I hope this helps! You should Google "medical practice management" or "electronic health record" to find more information.