12 Months of Health Information Technology: A Year of Momentous Progress

I would like to highlight ten of this year’s most notable developments in the world of health information technology.

1. January: Launch of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. Over the past 12 months, the concept of Meaningful Use has thoroughly permeated EHR development and implementation. The marketplace of certified products has grown quickly, interest in Meaningful Use among providers and hospitals is sky-high, and the pace of incentive payments has continued to accelerate.
2. February: Launch of DIRECT. The Direct Project provides a simple, secure, standards-based way for providers and other participants to send encrypted health information directly to trusted recipients over the internet—a kind of “health email.” During 2011, the Direct Project went from publishing its first set of consensus-approved specifications to testing in pilots , to initial production implementation across vendor and state boundaries.
3. March: The National Quality Strategy. In March, HHS released the National Quality Strategy for health improvement, the first effort to create a national framework to help guide local, state, and national efforts to improve the quality care in the United States. The National Quality Strategy recognizes health information technology as critical to improving the quality of care, improving health outcomes, and ultimately reducing the costs. Putting the National Quality Strategy into action, HHS subsequently launched two key initiatives that set specific national targets.
4. April: Launch of the Standards “Summer Camp.” At the April HIT Standards Committee meeting , Doug Fridsma, Director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability and Acting Chief Science Officer, kicked off the Summer of Standards—an accelerated effort to support the Stage 2 standards and certification requirements for the EHR Incentive Programs.
5. June: Spurring Health Information Technology Innovation. Announced June 8, 2011, and made possible by the America Competes Act, the Investing in Innovations (i2) Program is the first-of-its-kind government effort to use prizes and challenges to stimulate and accelerate the development of solutions to targeted health care problems. Prizes and challenges are attracting a wide range of innovators from both inside and outside traditional health care communities to address tough problems, spurring industry-wide innovation and rewarding only best-in-class work.
6. July: Health Information Technology Workforce. The growth in the number of providers adopting EHR systems, as well as the number of vendors developing EHR products, is positively affecting employment in the health information technology sector. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that within the fast-growing health field, the fastest growth has been among IT-related health workers, which added more than 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2010 alone.
7. September: Breach Reporting and Increasing Security Awareness. In early September, HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued the first report to Congress on breaches of unsecured protected health information. According to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, health care providers and their business associates must now notify HHS, affected individuals, and in certain cases the media, about breaches of unsecured protected health information (PHI).
8. September: Consumer eHealth Comes to the Fore. In September, ONC organized a Consumer Health IT Summit that formally launched a Consumer e-Health Program. The Summit initiated a pledge program for public and private sector organizations to support individuals in being partners in their health via information technology.
9. October: Regional Extension Centers Surpass their Goals. Adopting and using an EHR can be a daunting proposition for providers, especially those with limited resources, such as small primary care practices and critical access hospitals. ONC has funded 62 Regional Extension Centers (RECs) nationwide and a national Health Information Technology Research Center (HITRC) to help overcome the barriers to adoption and Meaningful Use.
10. November: Growth in the Adoption of EHRs. Data from the CDC’s gold-standard survey of office-based physicians released in November showed that the percentage of non-hospital based physicians who have adopted a basic EHR has doubled from 17% in 2008 to 34% in 2011. Nearly 40% of primary care physicians have adopted an EHR.