Federal HIT coordination office releases five-year plan

HHS's Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONCHIT) has released its five-year strategic plan, designed to help federal agencies synch up their health IT efforts. While the plan is broad, it does dig into two key goals: fostering patient-focused healthcare and population health.

To meet the "patient focused healthcare" goal, ONCHIT would like to see a transition to using electronic health records. Specifically, the agency wants to see private, secure, interoperable data sharing systems adopted, with a collective governance system in place to help guide the emergence of a shared health IT infrastructure. The population health goal, meanwhile, is to provide appropriate access to, and use of electronic health information to boost public health, biomedical research, quality improvement and emergency preparedness.

In addition to describing its broad goals, the ONCHIT report establishes timelines for achieving more than 40 milestones, in areas including adoption, interoperability, privacy and security. The report also provides a useful summary of electronic health information projects underway at agencies across the entire range of the federal government, from AHRQ to the Veterans' Administration.

To learn more about the plan:
- read ONCHIT's report (.pdf)
- read this iHealthBeat item