Support Structure for HITECH Initiatives

October 19th, 2010 by Jon Mertz Print Friendly

There are many initiatives taking place under the HITECH & Meaningful Use umbrella. The support structure being funded and facilitated by the ONC was outlined by the National Coordinator, David Blumenthal, M.D., M.P.P., in his September 30, 2010 testimony to the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, U.S. House of Representatives:

The St ate Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreement Program - A grant program to support States or State Designated Entities in rapidly building capacity for exchanging health information across the health care system both within and across states.
The Beacon Community Program - A grant program for communities to build and strengthen their HIT infrastructure and exchange capabilities. These communities will demonstrate the vision of a future where hospitals, clinicians, and patients are meaningful users of health IT, and together the community achieves measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency, and population health.
The Health IT Workforce Program - A multi-pronged approach designed to support the education of HIT professionals, including new and expanded training programs, curriculum development, and competency testing.
The Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program - A grant program to fund research focused on achieving breakthrough advances to address well documented problems that have impeded adoption: 1) Security of Health Information Technology; 2) Patient-Centered Cognitive Support; 3) Healthcare Application and Network Platform Architectures; and, 4) Secondary Use of EHR Data.