ONC's strategic plan for Healthcare IT

[rninformatics, DNP, RN]

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

http://www.hhs.gov/healthit