HHS Launches Health IT Collaborative - ' Complementary Work '

Wallace said AHIC's work and the Commission's work were complementary. AHIC will define what standards are needed, and the Certification Committee takes standards and applies them very specifically to products.

Part of the AHIC's role will be to take the best of many regional efforts in health IT.

"We're not going to reinvent anything; we'll build on the standardization that already exists," said Leavitt, "giving shape to the mass of things that are already happening."

AHIC will dissolve after five years. After that time, a private-sector health information community initiative should step into AHIC's role to set additional needed standards, certify new health information technology, and provide long-term governance for health care transformation.

On Tuesday, HHS is expected to give details on four funding opportunities related to AHIC's goals.

Seliger said people are still waiting to know when the money will flow. But when it does, he said, seed projects will fall on fertile ground.

Fifteen to 20 years ago, efforts to establish community health information networks failed, he said, but current efforts are more likely to succeed because of access to money and the Internet, and because of "an expectation that didn't exist 20 years ago."

At that time, he said, many health care providers feared that "by collaborating, they would undermine their competivity in the marketplace. Those fears have not only subsided, I think they are early nonexistent."

However, Leavitt said that the AHIC would address only one of what he views as health IT's three major problems. The other two are focusing on treatment rather than wellness, and misaligned incentives for health care providers, payers, and patients.

Nor will the AHIC deal with the "adoption gap" being created as health IT is increasingly adopted in large health care organizations, but not in offices with only a few physicians, which provide most health care.

Another part of the government's role is providing seed money, said Leavitt. In total, HHS will spend $86.5 million on health IT this year, and President Bush has requested $125 million for health IT for next year.

Leavitt said solving these issues is constantly on his mind.

"Every morning I get up and think of three things: health IT, health IT, health IT."

In a press release accompanying Leavitt's speech, HHS laid out AHIC's tasks:

1. Make recommendations on how to protect privacy and security.

2. Identify and make recommendations for prioritizing health information technology achievements that will provide immediate benefits to consumers of health care (e.g., drug safety, lab results, bio-terrorism surveillance).

3. Make recommendations regarding the creation of a private-sector, consensus-based, standard-setting and harmonization process, and a separate product certification process.

4. Make recommendations for a nationwide architecture that uses the Internet to share health information in a secure and timely manner.

5. Make recommendations on how the AHIC can be succeeded by a private-sector health information community initiative within five years. The sunset of the AHIC, after no more than five years, will be written into the charter.

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