ONC forms PCAST Workgroup

The Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare IT (ONC) has created the President’s Council on Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Report Workgroup under the auspices of the HIT Policy and HIT Standards Committees.

The PCAST Report Workgroup will synthesize and analyze public comments and input into the PCAST Report relative to implications on current and future ONC work. The council, a presidentially appointed group of academic and non-governmental organizations as well as industry members, issued a report last month that called for an information-sharing infrastructure to facilitate data exchange among institutions to achieve the full potential of health IT.

The creation of the workgroup follows PCAST’s December recommendations that the ONC and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) work to rapidly develop guidelines to spur adoption of an exchange language for use by health IT systems.

Workgroup members include:

• Paul Egerman, Chair, Escription
• William Stead, Vice Chair, Vanderbilt University
• Dixie Baker, SAIC
• Hunt Blair, Vermont HIE
• Tim Elwell, Misys Open Source
• Carl A. Gunter, University of Illinois
• John Halamka, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, HMS
• Leslie Harris, Center for Democracy & Technology
• Stan Huff, Intermountain Healthcare
• Robert Kahn
• Gary Marchionini, University of North Carolina
• Stephen Ondra, Office of Science & Technology Policy
• Jonathan Perlin, Hospital Corporation of America
• Richard Platt, Harvard Medical School
• Wes Rishel, Gartner
• Mark Rothstein, University of Louisville
• Steve Stack, American Medical Association
• Eileen Twiggs, Planned Parenthood