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PRESS RELEASE
| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |
|
| May 6th, 2004 |
Contact: HHS Press Office
(202) 690-6343 |
Secretary Thompson,
Seeking Fastest Possible Results, Names First Health Information
Technology Coordinator
HHS Also Announces Milestones in Developing Health
IT
Saying that "health information technology
has the potential to greatly
improve health care even as it yields huge savings," HHS
Secretary Tommy G.
Thompson today announced the appointment of David J. Brailer,
M.D., Ph.D.,
to serve as National Health Information Technology Coordinator.
This is a
new position at HHS, created by President Bush last week to coordinate
the
nation's health information technology efforts.
Secretary Thompson announced the appointment at a Secretarial
Summit on
health information technology (IT) convened in Washington today.
"Health information technology promises huge benefits,
and we need to move
quickly across many fronts to capture these benefits," Secretary
Thompson
said. "I asked the leaders of the health IT community to
join me at this
summit to see how we can press down on the accelerator and bring
about the
benefits of health IT even faster. The benefits are enormous,
but the task
is also enormously complex. We need more than a business-as-usual
approach."
At the summit, Secretary Thompson also announced several new
accomplishments
in developing standards to help bring about electronic medical
records and
other health IT benefits:
o HHS and other federal agencies will adopt 15 additional standards
agreed to by the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative
to allow
for the electronic exchange of clinical health information across
the
federal government.
o HHS also announced that, starting today, the medical vocabulary
known as SNOMED CT can be downloaded for free for use in the
United States
through HHS' National Library of Medicine. SNOMED CT, created
by the
College of American Pathologists, is a key clinical language
standard needed
for a national health information infrastructure.
o With HHS support, the voluntary international health
standards-setting organization known as Health Level 7 (HL7)
today is
announcing a favorable vote on a functional model and standards
for the
electronic health record. The model is a significant step toward
establishing nationwide guidelines for electronic health records.
Today's actions move the nation closer to a national, interoperable
health
information infrastructure that would allow quick, reliable and
secure
access to information needed for patient care, while protecting
patient
privacy. Such a system would allow a doctor or health care provider
to
access an always-up-to-date electronic health record of a patient
who has
agreed to be part of the system, regardless of when and where
the patient
receives care. President Bush last week established a national
goal of
assuring that most Americans have electronic health records within
10 years.
Today's summit brought together more than 100 leaders in the
area of health
information technology, including Veterans Affairs Secretary
Anthony J.
Principi, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and leaders
in IT and
health care, health information exchange projects, employers,
physicians,
health plans and patient advocates. Secretary Thompson convened
the meeting
to brainstorm on ways to speed up the development and implementation
of
electronic health records and local health information infrastructures.
National Health Information Technology Coordinator
Dr. Brailer, a national leader in harnessing health IT to promote
safe,
quality and efficient health care, will head a new office at
HHS, created by
a directive from President Bush. The office will support efforts
across
government and in the private sector to develop the standards
and
infrastructure to allow more effective use of information technology
to
promote higher quality care and reduce health care costs. One
of the
office's first tasks will be to study options to create incentives
in
Medicare and other HHS programs to encourage the private sector
to adopt
interoperable electronic health records. It is estimated that
a national
health information network can save about $140 billion per year
through
improved care and reduced duplication of medical tests.
President Bush already has proposed an additional $50 million
in his fiscal
year 2005 budget to support the development of local health information
networks, which would enable a physician treating a patient to
have
information about all other care the patient has received. These
local
networks would be able to communicate with one another in a dispersed
national network of local and regional systems.
In addition, the new office will work closely with the other
components of
HHS that are responsible for medical privacy and security regulations
to
ensure these efforts continue to secure and protect individually
identifiable health information. The office will prepare recommendations
on
methods to assure that the interoperable health information technology
appropriately addresses privacy and security issues, such as
appropriate
authorization, authentication and encryption of data that is
being
transmitted over the Internet.
Dr. Brailer currently is a senior fellow at Health Technology
Center in San
Francisco, where he has advised various regional and national
efforts on IT
and health information exchange. He previously served for 10
years as
chairman and CEO of CareScience Inc., one of the nation's leading
health
care management companies. While at CareScience, Dr. Brailer
designed and
oversaw the development of the health information exchange technology
implemented in Santa Barbara County, Calif. Dr. Brailer holds
doctoral
degrees in both medicine and economics.
"Dr. Brailer is one of the pioneers
in developing community health
information exchanges and will now help jumpstart our efforts
to improve the
quality of care available across America by speeding the nation's
progress
in implementing these kinds of solutions," Secretary Thompson
said.
Consolidated Health Informatics Initiative
As part of the CHI initiative, HHS and the other federal departments
that
deliver health care services -- the Departments of Defense and
Veterans
Affairs -- are working with other federal agencies to identify
appropriate,
existing data standards and to endorse them for use across the
federal
health care sector.
The 15 new standards build on the existing set of five standards
adopted in
March 2003. The new standards agreed to by federal agencies will
be used as
agencies develop and implement new information technology systems.
"Today we sit at the cusp of creating a 'virtual health
system', one that
will greatly improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health
care for
Americans through effective use of electronic health records,
personal
health records, and standards-based information technology tools," said
Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi. "Two years
of close
collaboration among VA, HHS and DoD have brought about this historic
opportunity. The federal government has taken a strong leadership
role and
helped lay the critical groundwork for a national public-private
health IT
partnership."
"Adoption of these standards will increase our ability
to share medical data
within the health community," said Dr. William Winkenwerder,
assistant
secretary of defense for health affairs. "Interoperability
through
standards will enable us to share electronic patient records
which will
improve the quality of health care. Better access to medical
information
means improvements in patient safety and military medical readiness,
and a
reduction in health care costs."
The CHI initiative is part of President Bush's eGov Initiatives,
which
includes a cross-government effort to develop a federal health
architecture
that would encompass the CHI standards, as well as compatible
software and
business systems to promote efficient, effective communication
to improve
quality of care.
"The CHI standards will help improve quality of care by
making it easier to
coordinate care and exchange needed information across federal
agencies and
will serve as a model for the private sector," said Karen
Evans,
administrator for E-Government and Information Technology within
the Office
of Management and Budget.
The specific new standards are:
- Health Level 7 (HL7) vocabulary standards for demographic
information, units of measure, immunizations, and clinical
encounters, and
HL7's Clinical Document Architecture standard for text based
reports. (Five
standards)
- The College of American Pathologists Systematized Nomenclature
of
Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) for laboratory result
contents, non-laboratory interventions and procedures, anatomy,
diagnosis
and
problems, and nursing. HHS is making SNOMED-CT available
for use in the
United States at no charge to users. (Five standards)
- Laboratory Logical Observation Identifier Name Codes (LOINC)
to
standardize the electronic exchange of laboratory test orders
and drug label
section headers. (One standard.)
- The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA)
transactions and code sets for electronic exchange of health
related
information to perform billing or administrative functions.
These are the
same standards now required under HIPAA for health plans,
health care
clearinghouses and those health care providers who engage
in certain
electronic transactions. (One standard.)
- A set of federal terminologies related to medications,
including the
Food and Drug Administration's names and codes for ingredients,
manufactured
dosage forms, drug products and medication packages, the
National Library of
Medicine's RxNORM for describing clinical drugs, and the
Veterans Administration's National Drug File Reference Terminology
(NDF-RT)
for
specific drug classifications. (One standard.)
- The Human Gene Nomenclature (HUGN) for exchanging information
regarding the role of genes in biomedical research in the
federal health
sector. (One standard.)
- The Environmental Protection Agency's Substance Registry
System for
non- medicinal chemicals of importance to health care. (One
standard.)
SNOMED CT Medical Vocabulary
Secretary Thompson also announced that SNOMED CT, a standardized
medical
vocabulary is now available for download as part of the National
Library of
Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus
at
http://umlsinfo.nlm.nih.gov. The vocabulary is available free
for anyone in
the United States. Users must register via the Web for a free
UMLS license
before downloading the data or requesting a copy on DVD.
With terms for more than 300,000 current medical concepts, the
College's
standardized system has been recognized as the world's most comprehensive
clinical terminology database available. With its free availability
within
the United States, it is now possible for health care providers,
hospitals,
insurance companies, public health departments, medical research
facilities
and others to easily incorporate this uniform terminology system
into their
information systems.
More information about HHS' efforts to promote health IT is
available at http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2004pres/20040427a.html.
| Last Modified: 7/16/2009 9:06:18 AM |
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