The provisions of the Health IT for Economical and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act are best understood not as investments in technology per se but as efforts to improve the health of Americans and the performance of their healthcare system, wrote David Blumenthal, MD, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, in a perspective published in the Dec. 30, 2009 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

A gap exists between policy makers' expectations that current commercial EMRs can improve coordination of patient care and clinicians' real-world experiences with EMRs, according to a study conducted by the Center for Studying Health System Change and published online Dec. 22, 2009, in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society believes there is much more to applaud than criticize concerning the release of interim final rules on meaningful use and qualified EHRs from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). However, the American Hospital Association noted that while health IT holds great promise in improving care, widespread efforts toward adoption will be hindered unless key provisions in these rules are addressed.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has made available two additional grant programs to support the training and development of the skilled workforce required to support adoption and use of health IT.

There is no one financial silver bullet to funding a health information exchange (HIE), according to Keith Hepp, vice president of nonprofit HIE HealthBridge who spoke during a Webinar broadcast Dec. 22, 2009, sponsored by California eHealth Collaborate (CAeHC).

A successful newborn screening program depends on reliable and secure multidirectional flow of patient information among data users, as well as long-term availability of such information as life changes for the patient, according to an article in the January edition of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).

Finding ways to help regional health information organizations (RHIOs) become operational and self-sustaining will bolster the current approach to nationwide health IT, according to an article in the December edition of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA).

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has awarded health information management nonprofit, the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) Foundation, a $48,000 research development conference grant to lead a two-day summit, based on a project to improve health services research agenda to leverage health IT in rural America.