White House Panel Issues Report on Health IT
On December 8, 2010, President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) issued its report on the importance of widespread adoption and use of health IT to improve healthcare delivery and reduce costs. The report concluded that:
information technology can help catalyze a number of important benefits including improved access to patient data, which can help clinicians as they diagnose and treat patients and patients themselves as they strive to take more control over their health; streamlined monitoring of public health patterns and trends; an enhanced ability to conduct clinical trials of new diagnostic methods and treatments; and the creation of new hightechnology markets and jobs. Health information technology can also help support a range of healthcare related economic reforms needed to address our Nation’s longterm fiscal challenges.
PCAST also recommended "nationwide adoption of a universal exchange language for healthcare information and a digital infrastructure for locating patient records while strictly ensuring patient privacy," and tasked CMS and ONC with developing guidelines "to spur adoption of such a language and to facilitate a transition from traditional electronic health records to the use of healthcare data tagged with privacy and security specifications."
You can view PCAST's press release here.
You can view PCAST report here.
