[rninformatics]

AMIA at Today's NHII Meeting



AMIA ( the American Medical Informatics Association) is excited to be an endorser of the National Health Information Infrastructure meetings that are taking place in Washington, DC this week. Attendees packed the room (along with other spill-over rooms) to see David Brailer present his framework for the National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) and watched as he led an aggressive agenda today with representatives from government, the HIT vendor community, purchasers, payers, clinical leaders, consumer advocates, health IT collaborations, and HIT associations and professional organizations.



Over and over today during the meeting the phrase tipping point was used in reference to the place we are in health care adoption of information technology. Speaker after speaker hailed Dr. Brailerâ agenda, and added their support of the initiatives spelled out within its framework.



The agenda entitled The Decade of Health Information Technology: Delivering Consumer-centric and Information-rich Health Care addresses the urgent health care need, and then outlines a framework including four major goals to: inform clinical practice; interconnect physicians; personalize care; and improve population health.

The framework goes on to provide a clear path for each of these goals. The document is available at: http://www.hsrnet.net/nhii/materials.htm



AMIA President, Charles Safran spoke during the Unifying the Industry panel this afternoon. He stated that there is a critical need for trained informatics professionals to assist in Dr. Brailer's plans, I would like to see 6000 physician informaticists and at least 6000 nurse informaticians to be taught through the high-level informatics training centers across the country one for every hospital and care setting. Just for a perfect example of why, he said, David Brailer won the student AMIA award the Martin Epstein Award in 1983. We need more Dr. Brailers.



This month's JAMIA article Consensus Action Agenda for Achieving the National Health Information Infrastructure was also the framework for the meeting, and included in all attendee packets.



The meeting had an unprecedented assembly of the leadership of the Department of Health and Human Services including Sec. Tommy Thompson - HHS, Mark McClellan - CMS, Elias Zerhouni - NIH, Julie Gerberding - CDC, Carolyn Clancy - AHRQ, Lester Crawford- FDA, Elizabeth Duke - HRSA, Charles Curie - SAMHSA, Charles Grim- IHS, William Winkenwerder - DoD, Jonathan Perlin - VA, and Stephen Benowitz - OPM.



Members from Congress came to show their support. Senator Frist, the majority leader and physician, and Rep. Nancy Johnson, Chair of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health spoke passionately about the need for health care reforms using information technology. Rep. Patrick Kennedy also attended the summit. Many other industry and organizational leaders were asked to provide comment throughout the day. More information about this meeting is available at: http://www.hsrnet.net/nhii/