In his first official national press conference, President Barack Obama touched on the importance of an electronic medical health record infrastructure as a way to both help patients and get the economy back on track.

Obama first gave a prepared speech Monday night in which he laid out his argument for spending more than $800 billion to jump-start the economy. He then took questions from reporters. On healthcare information technology investment, the president challenged naysayers, asking, “Why wouldn’t we want to put that on an electronic medical record that will reduce error rates, reduce our long-term cost of health care, and create jobs right now?”

Both the Senate and House bills would offer payment incentives to healthcare providers that implement health information technology. They also would eventually penalize providers that do not implement measures.