National Health IT Week

By Lauren Thompson, Director, Federal Health Architecture

In his presidential proclamation issued Sept. 12, President Obama named September 11-17 as National Health IT Week. In the proclamation, the President stated, “During National Health Information Technology Week, we highlight the critical importance of secure and efficient information systems to improving the delivery of health care in the United States.”

I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the great strides being made throughout the country to bring medical records into the digital age. Though it won’t happen overnight, we’re making steady progress toward getting care providers throughout the country to use electronic health records, and in parallel, we’re overcoming the barriers hindering them from securely sharing patient records over the internet.

These are exciting times to work in this industry! We’re ushering in a new era in healthcare in the U.S.; one where doctors will have real-time access to patient health information at the point of care and where patients will be more engaged and empowered in their own care.

In my role with the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), I have the privilege of interacting daily with many of the talented, dedicated professionals working at the forefront of health IT interoperability. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your dedication and for constantly inspiring me to think even bigger about what we can achieve to promote better care for Americans.

I would also like to take this opportunity to highlight the federal partners who have been working together tirelessly through FHA and the CONNECT project to make nationwide health IT interoperability a reality.  Through FHA, we have made great strides in harmonizing Federal health architectures to create a comprehensive, integrated health information model that supports semantic interoperability. The leadership of the federal partners in the creation and development of the Nationwide Health Information Network standards and specifications as well as their role in the CONNECT project have helped to reshape health IT in the U.S.  Because of their work, tremendous progress has been made toward the goal of interoperable, electronic health records for all Americans by 2014.

We are nowhere near finished with our work, and every time another organization joins the CONNECT community or integrates nationwide standards into their systems, we take an important step forward as we work to provide 21st century health services to all our citizens.