Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recently announced of a national private-public collaboration to advance the use of electronic health records and interoperability through established standards. The American Health Information Community will aid in the nationwide transition to electronic health records, which are digital collections of patients’ medical history and health characteristics. The AHIC will be formed under the auspices of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, and will provide input and recommendations to HHS on how to make the records interoperable, while assuring patient privacy.

“The national strategy for achieving interoperability of digital health information is for federal agencies—which pay for more than one-third of all health care in the country—to work with private-sector health care providers and employers in developing and adopting an architecture, standards and certification process,” says Leavitt. “The use of electronic health records and other information technology will transform our health care system by reducing medical errors, minimizing paperwork hassles, lowering costs and improving quality of care.”

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