Ensuring a Strategic Approach to the Implementation of Health IT

In June of 2008, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Department of Health and Human Services published the Federal Health Information Technology Strategic Plan — a roadmap for the implementation of nationwide health IT. Now (ONC) needs to update the plan to take into account progress made toward the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) vision and new opportunities and challenges that may have arisen.

The experiences of providers and health IT professionals working "on the ground" play an enormous role in crafting these adjustments to the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan and setting the course of our future efforts. On April 5, ONC posted a draft of the HIT Policy Committee Strategic Plan Workgroup's Health IT Strategic Framework, a foundation for updates to the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan. The draft Framework focuses on the goal, guiding principles, objectives, and strategies of four key areas: Meaningful use of health IT, Policy and technical infrastructure, Privacy and security, and Learning health system. The long and short of it is that ONC needs you — your experiences and insights can tell us much about what is working well in the implementation of the HITECH Act and where we have opportunities for improvement.