The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has set as a goal the development of a strategic plan for Healthcare IT. Copied below is their announcement from yesterday, including a link to a complete copy of the plan.
This will have obvious implications to anyone working on US-based heathcare
IT projects, so please take a moment to review and feel free to discuss via
our NI Forum here.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
(ONC), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), today
released a comprehensive plan for advancing health information technology
(IT). The plan will serve as a guide to coordinate the federal government's
health IT efforts, which seek to achieve nationwide implementation of an
interoperable health IT infrastructure throughout both the public and
private sector.
The ONC-Coordinated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan focuses efforts along
two primary goals: patient-focused health care and population health. The
first goal envisions a transformation to higher quality, more-cost efficient
care, meeting patients' needs, through electronic health information access
and use. The second goal, related to population health, envisions the
appropriate, authorized, and timely access and use of electronic health
information to benefit public health, biomedical research, quality
improvement, and emergency preparedness.
"Significant work has been completed to date to advance the nationwide
health IT agenda. The plan provides an extensive documentation of the work
completed by ONC and other federal partners over the past five years,"
stated Dr. Robert Kolodner, national coordinator for health information
technology. "It also establishes the next generation of health IT
milestones to harness the power of information technology to help transform
health and care in this country.''
Objectives, strategies, and milestones have been established for each goal.
They portray the totality of what must be done across the federal government
to address privacy and security concerns, achieve an interoperable health IT
architecture to ensure reliable data exchange, accelerate IT adoption, and
foster collaborative governance.
The plan was developed by ONC, working in collaboration with 12 agencies and
staff divisions within HHS, the Departments of Commerce, Defense, and
Veterans Affairs, and the Federal Communications Commission. Two federal
advisory bodies, the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics and
the American Health Information Community, also contributed to some of the
strategies and milestones that are cited in the plan.
A copy of the complete plan as well as a plan synopsis can be found at
www.hhs.gov/healthit
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