Johns Hopkins University has established a new health IT center to improve public health and reduce health care disparities, Government Health IT reports.
The Johns Hopkins Center for Population Health IT was developed to help private organizations and public health agencies better use existing and emerging health IT tools (Sullivan, Government Health IT, 7/12).
Jonathan Weiner, director of CPHIT, said the center also aims to broaden the focus of health IT beyond the treatment of individual patients and "harness these health IT systems to create solutions for the many population health issues facing our nation" (Bird, FierceHealthIT, 7/13).
The center's priorities include:
- Using health IT to improve care for low-income populations; and
- Leveraging electronic health record data to improve patient safety.
In a statement, Johns Hopkins said that CPHIT "will draw on faculty skilled in public health, medicine, informatics, computer science, business and systems engineering" (McKinney, Modern Healthcare, 7/12).
In addition, the center will launch the CPHIT Industry Partners Program to form alliances with private companies that support the center and receive access to its research and development (Government Health IT, 7/12).