Healthcare Leaders Outline Strategies For 21st-Century Care Delivery At Fourth A

The event featured a number of today's key influencers in healthcare, beginning with remarks from Dr. David Brailer, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, who discussed his strategies for overcoming barriers inherent to achieving widespread adoption of interoperable EHRs within 10 years. He provided an update on his office's accomplishments in bringing together healthcare stakeholders, promoting adoption and supporting interoperability. Dr. Brailer emphasized the importance of collaboration between public and private sectors, and hailed the recent formation of the American Health Information Community (AHIC) as a positive step in advancing more widespread use of electronic health records across the continuum of care. AHIC, a federally charted commission comprised of 17 representatives of both the private and public sectors, will hold its first meeting October 7 and will advise Health and Human Services on making health records digital and interoperable, and assuring that the privacy and security of those records are protected in a smooth, market-led way. "We need to create a level playing field to have the right IT tools available for everyone," Dr. Brailer said at the summit. "The government needs to be a catalyst to this effort, and not a regulator or a dictator." Brailer also commented that promoting IT adoption does not equate to "dropping computers on physicians' desks." He urged the vendor community to be guided by a commitment to promoting the overall quality of care and to designing "software that drives value for physicians" - particularly by offering user- friendly and effective physician workflow tools. http://www.cnw.ca/fr/releases/archive/September2005/26/c3878.html

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