The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is doing its part to create an interoperable learning health system by awarding 20 entities $38 million for three grant programs.

“We have made great strides in the adoption and use of health IT. As we move beyond adoption to a learning health system where information is available when and where it matters most, it is important to ensure greater care coordination at the community level, and these grants provide resources to meet this goal,” said Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, national coordinator for health IT.

The grants build on programs funded through HITECH and will further HHS’s efforts to improve the way providers are paid, improve and innovate in care delivery, and share information more broadly to providers, consumers and others to support better health care decisions while maintaining privacy, according to a release.

The three cooperative agreement programs are:

• Advance Interoperable Health Information Technology Services to Support Health Information Exchange – This two-year cooperative agreement program has awarded $29.6 million to support the efforts of 12 states or state designated entities to expand the adoption of health information exchange technology, tools, and services; facilitate and enable the send, receive, find, and use capabilities of health information across organizational, vendor, and geographic boundaries; and increase the integration of health information in interoperable health IT to support care processes and decision making. 
• The Community Health Peer Learning Program - This two-year cooperative agreement grant award was made to AcademyHealth to work with 15 communities around population health strategies. Communities working with AcademyHealth under this program will be required to identify data solutions, accelerate local progress, disseminate best practices and learning guides, and help inform national strategy around population health challenges. The grant for this program totals $2.2 million.
• The Workforce Training Program – This two-year cooperative agreement program has awarded seven grantees $6.7 million to update training materials from the original Workforce Curriculum Development program funded under HITECH. In addition to updating training materials, the goal of this program is to train incumbent healthcare workers to use new health IT in a variety of settings. This workforce program will focus on the four key topic areas of: population health, care coordination, new care delivery and payments models, and value-based and patient-centered care.