On Tuesday, HHS awarded LMI Consulting and the Brookings Institution a grant to establish a public-private successor to the American Health Information Community, a federal advisory panel on health IT, Healthcare IT News reports.
"By securing a successor to the AHIC in the private sector while maintaining broad public-private collaboration, we will help to ensure that the health IT standards process is truly self-sustaining," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said (Monegain, Healthcare IT News, 1/22).
National Coordinator for Health IT Robert Kolodner said that the LMI-Brookings team demonstrated in its application for the grant that it already has involved a wide array of health IT stakeholders. The grant is worth $5 million, with $2 million allocated to the LMI-Brookings team and $3 million earmarked for start-up funding for the new successor organization, Kolodner said (Ferris, Government Health IT, 1/22).
The LMI-Brookings team will develop a two-stage process to engage key public and private health IT stakeholders. The first phase is expected to take four months and will focus on stakeholder outreach, and the design and development of governing documents for the successor organization, called AHIC 2.0. In the second phase, the groups will aim to establish AHIC 2.0 by December.
Additional funding might be allocated to sustain AHIC 2.0 once it is established, Healthcare IT News reports.
"The successful establishment of AHIC 2.0 in the private sector will ensure long-term success in the development of a nationwide health information network," Kolodner said (Healthcare IT News, 1/22).