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GCN Home > 04/03/06 issue

Health IT gets into gear

Aggressive schedule over next 8 months to get technology into the hands of doctors, patients

By Mary Mosquera, GCN Staff

David Brailer is a doctor by trade, but as the national coordinator for health IT, he is proving to be more of an engineer.

For the last two years, Brailer has set in motion health IT efforts that individually and in tandem will let physicians, hospitals, insurers and pharmacists exchange patient data to transform the quality of medical care.

Like the gears of a complex machine, he said, the health IT efforts are beginning to mesh and are building a national momentum that promises to change the way physicians go about the business of providing health care and change the way Americans receive it.

“These are all different gears that have to turn together to get the wheel to turn. What’s happening is that they’re all turning and they’re turning slightly out of speed with each other, but they’re all starting to get cranked up,” Brailer said.

The initial efforts that the Health and Human Services Department is cranking up this year will give physicians and consumers their first dose of what is to come. One example would be retiring the medical clipboard holding those paper forms that patients fill out over and over, often with the same information, at their physician’s office. Some consumers will be able to use an electronic registration summary containing information such as name, address and basic medication history, that they can direct their physicians to use.

As each critical cog of the health IT machine turns another notch this year, the success of each near-term result will help propel the realization of long-term health IT goals. Those include adoption of interoperable electronic health records by physicians and hospitals, easy-to-use personal health records that consumers own, remote monitoring systems for patients with chronic conditions, and electronic tools for real-time nationwide public health event monitoring and rapid response to crises.

HHS has seeded or promoted—or greased the wheels of—eight major initiatives that depend on physicians, hospitals, insurers, IT companies and government working together.

More news on related topics: Health IT, Management, IT Management



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