Health IT Innovation is the Key to Care
As Americans, we realize the importance of relentless innovation. A key component of securing a healthy future for all Americans relies on harnessing innovation in health IT.
The new Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program announced today and funded at a level of $60 million through the HITECH Act, is designed with this purpose in mind. This program will fund projects in areas of research where breakthrough advances are needed to address barriers in health IT adoption. Addressing these breakthrough areas will require the most advanced thinking the nation can bring to bear.
Each research project will be charged with formulating and executing an ambitious research agenda. This research agenda will focus on specific goals of HITECH, and the challenges to adoption of health IT and achieving meaningful use that are critical to realizing the full promise of health IT. Each research project will be responsible for thinking ahead of the curve and developing innovative solutions to navigate health IT barriers.
The projects selected for participation in the SHARP Program will implement a collaborative, multidisciplinary program of research addressing short-term and long-term challenges within one of four focus areas: security of health IT, patient-centered cognitive support, health care application and network architectures, and secondary use of EHR data. Research in these areas is critical to improving health care through the use of health IT.
Why invest in research for breakthrough advances in health IT, when we have so many communities who are just now laying the groundwork? Simply stated, because it’s important to simultaneously address both the present and the future as we establish a new paradigm for health IT. ONC envisions a health care system that delivers higher-quality, safer, and more efficient, accessible, equitable, and convenient care enabled by health IT. Research conducted by these projects will accelerate progress towards achieving just that.
Fostering innovative approaches to improving health care through the use of health IT will create a high-performing, learning health care system. Solutions uncovered by projects’ research will help us tackle challenges and barriers we encounter on the road to improving the quality and value of health care – today, and into the future.
I encourage you to learn more about the SHARP Program by visiting the SHARP web page and by reading the Fact Sheet found online.
–David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P. – National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
While I agree that it’s important to simultaneously address both the present and the future as we establish a new paradigm for health IT, I hope to see very soon significant funding released for states to implement their HIE efforts. It is very difficult to continue planning without a clear idea of what the budgets will look like.
I like the progressive thinking. We could have used this forward thinking a number of years back and we would have a better formulated EMR stimulus. As it is, it seems like ONC was handed a bunch of money with some guidelines which were thrown together to hopefully spur EMR adoption. Hopefully this type of research will improve future government programs related to EMR adoption.
I agree a clear path is essential for achieving goals. Unfortunately the dialogue around modernizing the delivery of health care has historically been fractured by competing interests.
Over the past 4 years ONC funding has incentivized these competing interests to come together in numerous ways to discuss and articulate their business requirements. Getting this dialogue underway in a coordinated fashion has been an essential step in defining the health care market’s modernization goals and objectives, and has provided all interested parties with the information necessary to prioritize tasks moving foward. This proposed ONC initiative is a logical next step.
Great news. Since we already have several years’ of experience in “patient-centered cognitive support” in a small practice setting, I would love to find out if this project actually supports such efforts directly.
We need people with depth knowledge, and experence and have a background in science to establish the new paradigm for health IT. Medical doctors should work closely with computer scientists in the years ahead. We need new computers processors, DNA network and more…. And we will see again America that will be a leader in the health IT again. We should also be more confident and should used more American scientsts and engineers in those projects and please do not give out those IP and should give the credits for those people really are invented it.
I totally agree with your observation. We must proceed with careful, thoughtful planning and respect for our patients’.
Interesting program. I think a lot of interesting work will come out of the “use of secondary information” initiative.
Daniel Garrett, of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) health industries technology practice, said the potential of secondary health information has yet to be realized.
“The implementation of electronic health records is an enormous investment for healthcare providers and for the industry, but the bigger challenge will be in trying to make use of the wealth of information within the U.S. health system that has been trapped in paper silos, just waiting to be unlocked and leveraged,” Garrett said. “Healthcare organizations need to work together to overcome barriers and foster collaboration and innovation.”
According to PWC, the healthcare industry won’t see the full value of investments in electronic medical records and other health IT investments until it finds secondary uses for the information being gathered. This has also created some potential concerns from advocates for health data rights.
See the report here:
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/healthcare/publications/secondary-health-data.jhtml
Brian, the problem with the potential embodied in secondary uses of health information is really twofold.
First, we are asking physicians to directly perform gathering of the data above and beyond what is an integral part of their current interaction with patients. The result is an investment of time, and ultimately money, for no clear and immediate benefit to the data gatherer. The indirect stimulus incentives are not really covering the cost to the physician. Hence the opinion that if we want data to be gathered, we should simply pay for the data instead of financing tools and regulations that we think may enable data gathering.
Lastly, before any secondary use is contemplated, serious legislation should be put in place to protect patients and physicians right to privacy. Today’s standards are not quite adequate.
I agree fully.
Margalit,
The movement of the industry toward value based payment will start to align the financial incentives to create incentives for practices to collect structured, codified data which can be used for appropriate secondary uses. We need the primary use of the data to move from documentation/billing to quality care delivery. There has been a lot of conversation around Meaningful Use but not much around limiting “Unmeaningful Use” such as the documentation requirements for Evaluation and Management coding.
I think the SHARP grants can help accelerate these changes.
Hmmmm – I definitely would not describe myself as “disgruntled” but I would like to know why some meetings are held in open session and others are held only partially open or completely closed:
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091223/REG/312239986/1153
Brian, have you considered closed door meetings likely occur in just about every industry?
In order to implement IT and efficient eHealth charting we need to1) use a reliable health data integration engine and 2) computerized hospital ward operation, mainly patient treatment charts. I can offer both solutions.
Am I understanding this correctly … for the SHARP program, there will ONE grant awarded in each of the four named areas, on an expedited fast-track basis ? So after 4 years, we’ll have some sense of how well those particular visions+implementations worked, but no comparably funded alternatives to compare them to ? In other words, without a great deal of time for potential applicants to be very thoughtful in preparing their applications, or the evaluators to be very thoughtful either, we’re essentially picking the winning horses based on how good they look in the starting gates ??? Seems like we ought to be funding more diversity of approaches.
As a business owner from a small poor rural community, I can see the need for improved Health IT. Although communities like mine may lack some of the updated infrastructure and resources, we have no less of a desire for the highest quality health care. Please keep rural communities in mind a you continue this dialogue.
I completely agree, very good thinking.
It’s a tough call but I’m enjoying the sprited exchange of views.
The need for improvement is clear and this is a potential answer with the least cost.
“Why invest in research for breakthrough advances in health IT, when we have so many communities who are just now laying the groundwork? Simply stated, because it’s important to simultaneously address both the present and the future as we establish a new paradigm for health IT. ” – I agree on this. We must take both sides.
That program sounds very good! And $60 million are really a lot of money. Good luck!
I looked into the research areas targeted by SHARP. I’ve got two questions
1. It’s been years now since this program has started. Which of the “tangible goals” as stated have they achieved.
2. Is part of the goal using information technology to improve collaboration between medical practitioners, drug companies, medical researchers and equipment manufacturers?
The part about mayo clinic gathering information about best practices and possibly making them available to medical practitioners is commendable. In software development, this is an important process in quality assurance to make sure people aren’t put in danger as a result of crappy software. Good to know the same principle is being applied in medicine
Hi Jason – More information and updates are available on the SHARP program page at http://www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/strategic-health-it-advanced-research-projects-sharp.