During its meeting this week, the Health IT Policy Committee's strategic planning work group discussed how the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT could address privacy concerns while simultaneously creating a health care system that promotes openness and improves care, InformationWeek reports.
Some work group members said officials have devoted more attention to privacy and security issues while neglecting health IT's capacity to advance research goals.
Don Detmer -- former president and CEO of the American Medical Informatics Association -- suggested that ONC should make it easier for interested consumers to provide researchers with access to their health information.
Jodi Daniel -- director of ONC's Office of Policy and Research -- said it would be difficult for the government to undertake such an effort. She added that private organizations might be better suited to promote clinical data sharing (Guerra, InformationWeek, 3/11).
Federal Role Clarification
During its meeting, the work group also added new language to ONC's Health IT Strategic Framework.
The framework describes four long-term federal roles for health IT. The roles call for the federal government to:
- Provide health IT resources that support public health goals;
- Set standards, implementation criteria and certification requirements;
- Promote health IT adoption and health information exchange; and
- Use health IT to improve the efficiency of health programs (Lipowicz, Federal Computer Week, 3/11).