If you’ve heard me speak in the past few months, you’ll know that the focus of my remarks is primarily on ONC’s mission to achieve nationwide interoperability and reduce clinician burden relative to health IT.  I emphasize these areas because they are absolutely critical to the health of Americans using our healthcare system.

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Health information technology (health IT) has come a long way since Hurricane Katrina came roaring ashore in 2005.  At that time, few hospitals in the region had adopted electronic health records (EHRs).  To address some coordination issues, a national foundation comprised of several private businesses, national physician organizations, and other health professionals stood up a basic system to share medication history with providers in a matter of hours. This system, KatrinaHealth.org, was helpful in limited circumstances;

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As the youngest child in a relatively large extended family, I never thought I would be called upon to help my mom be a caregiver for my grandparents, who throughout my life were incredibly healthy.  Unfortunately, dementias, including Alzheimer’s disease, do not discriminate in choosing their victims, and my once healthy grandparents now require a higher level of care. And with that care, comes the need to make sure that we family caregivers have the information we need to help manage their care,

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