Background: Information technology plays an important role in the developmental process. Activities of the Vietnam health sector mainly provide social services so that the investment in application and development of information technology has met various difficulties and constraints. Objectives: This study aims to discover the real status and resolutions in state management on health information technology. Subjects and method: Research performed on 144 state organizations involved in the health sector in Vietnam, with 403 surveys between 2006 and 2007. The data were collected and analyzed by SPSS 10.0 software. Results: The state management capacity on information technology in the health sector remained weak and contains shortcomings. The health sector had no overall plan for applying and developing information technology; 43.8% of surveyed organizations have no special division for IT; 34.7% have no IT specialist. The investment effect was not high enough yet, up to 62.5% of surveyed organizations have LAN but only 42.4% have specialist management of software. There are no procedures for monitoring, surveying and assessing the effect of IT activities in the health sector. Conclusion: Real state of management on IT in the health sector still face many difficulties and ineffectiveness due to the orientation for application of IT development in the health sectors is still unclear.
State management ; information technology