eHealth Initiatives

Purpose and Goals

During the State of the Union Address on January 20, 2004, President George W. Bush stated that "By computerizing health records, we can avoid dangerous medical mistakes, reduce costs, and improve care." The President set a health initiative goal to implement an Electronic Health Record (EHR) within 10 years that would be available for most Americans at any time or place. In order to achieve this goal, the President charged the Secretary of Health with overseeing activities that would transition the United States health care system from a traditional paper-based system to standardized electronic health records. The Secretary of Health created the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to serve as his advisor and provide leadership for the development and implementation of a nationwide health information network.

In January 2009, President Barack H. Obama took office. President Obama builds on President Bush's views, making "broad adoption of standards-based electronic health information systems, including electronic health records" a central part of his Technology agenda. The Obama health care platform (PDF-81KB) states, "Most medical records are still stored on paper, which makes them difficult to use to coordinate care, measure quality, or reduce medical errors," and implementation of the EHR can bring "improvements such as reduced hospital stays, avoidance of duplicative and unnecessary testing, more appropriate drug utilization, and other efficiencies." Further, in his February 24, 2009 address to Congress, President Obama emphasized the need to "invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives."

NPCR-AERRO participates in national and international activities related to the development of standardized, interoperable systems to facilitate the development of an EHR, including the activities highlighted below. The purpose of NPCR-AERRO's participation in these activities is to represent the cancer surveillance community's interests and provide information to the cancer community stakeholders.

eHealth initiatives that are moving the nation toward a nationwide EHR include—

• The American Health Information Community (AHIC) Successor, now known as the National eHealth Collaborative (NeHC),* is a public-private partnership to develop a process to prioritize activities related to health information technology (IT). This new process will enable collaborations of broad health-related interests to identify and submit the national priorities for health IT standards development initiatives.
• Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)* is a partnership between public and private sectors with the common goal of developing a widely accepted and useful set of standards enabling interoperability among health care software applications at the local, regional, and national health information network in the United States. HITSP responds to requests from HHS and AHIC.
• The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT)* is a recognized certification body for EHRs and their networks, and an independent, voluntary, private-sector initiative. The Commission's mission is to accelerate the adoption of robust, interoperable health information technology by creating a credible, efficient certification process.
• Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) is an initiative to develop a nationwide interoperable health information infrastructure that will allow the secure exchange of information across the health care community, including the consumer. This network will enable consumers and health care providers to have ready access to their health information at any location or point in time for clinical decision making.

The NeHC sets national priorities through a National Prioritization Process* and conveys those value cases to HITSP to complete harmonization. The CCHIT then incorporates the new standards into the certification process and the NHIN uses the standards in its information exchanges.

• The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS)-sponsored Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)* fosters participation and collaboration among national and international health care professionals and industry to find ways to improve data exchange between health care computer systems. IHE supports the use of national established standards such as Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level Seven (HL7). There is cross-fertilization between the HITSP and IHE initiatives. These two initiatives actually use and build upon work from one another.
• The Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC)* was established in 1999 to promote the use of standardized information on health and health care. The PHDSC was incorporated in 2003 as a not-for-profit organization. It is a national non-profit member-based partnership of federal, state, and local health agencies, national and local professional associations, and public and private sector organizations and individuals. The PHDSC works to bring a common voice from public health and health services research communities to the national data standardization efforts.
• The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE)* Position Statements are case definitions that describe an official list of nationally notifiable conditions and a standardized reporting definition for each condition on the official list. The position statement must comply with AHIC-recommended standards to support "automated case reporting from electronic health records or other clinical care information systems."
• Health Level Seven (HL7)* is one of several American National Standards Institute (ANSI)*-accredited standards developing organizations (SDOs) operating in the health care arena. Most SDOs produce standards (sometimes called specifications or protocols) for a particular health care domain such as pharmacy, medical devices, imaging, or insurance (claims processing) transactions. HL7's domain is clinical and administrative data. HL7 has several working committees that focus on specific topics to address interoperability issues. There are currently two working committees that have potential implications for cancer registries: the HL7 Anatomical Pathology Committee and the HL7 Public Health and Emergency Response Committee.

Activities and Timeline

Modeling

Analysis and Design

Implementation

Success Story

In 2008, NPCR-AERRO collaborated with the PHDSC and IHE to develop a white paper titled Building a Roadmap for Health Information System Interoperability for Public Health* that describes the public health domain. NPCR-AERRO provided the cancer registry scenario as one of the examples for public health.

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