Studies done by Harvard, RAND and the Commonwealth Fund peg the cost of the digitization plan between at least US$75 billion to $100 billion, according to the CNN article.

However, the health care industry spends $2 trillion dollars a year, so the $100 billion may be well worth the long-term savings.

David Brailer, the former National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who worked under President Bush from 2004 to 2006, expects the computerized system to save the industry $200 billion to $300 billion a year.

"The hard part of this is that we can't just drop a computer on every doctor's desk," Brailer told CNN Money. "Getting electronic records up and running is a very technical task."