A qualified pool of workers will be needed to ensure the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), information exchange across health care providers and public health authorities, and the redesign of workflows within health care settings to gain the quality and efficiency benefits of EHRs, while maintaining privacy and security. The supply of qualified health information professionals is a rate-limiting factor and maybe one of the greatest barriers to the comprehensive adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (health IT).

The purpose of this program, one component of the Workforce Development program, is to rapidly create or expand health IT academic programs at community colleges. The goal of the Community College Consortia funded under this program is to educate health IT professionals that can facilitate the implementation and support of an electronic health care system.

It is expected that by the end of the two-year project period, collectively all of the community colleges participating in the program will have established training programs with the capacity to train at least 10,500 students annually to be part of the HIT workforce.