NEW ORLEANS -- The Health and Human Services Department will ask for proposals next month for a new version of a health care “network of networks” capable of giving consumers unprecedented control over the dissemination of their personal health care information.
Robert Kolodner, interim director of the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), said the government will seek proposals for a state- or regionally hosted network that could enable consumers to direct their personal health information toward -- or away from -- specific health care organizations.
In remarks today at the Health Information Management Systems Society annual meeting, Kolodner said the request for proposals for a trial implementation of the National Health Information Network will require bidders to include specific technical capabilities for enabling people to control their information and how it flows through NHIN.
The trial networks should give “people the capability to decide how they view, store and control access to their own information,” Kolodner said. “A person could say how that information flows to specific entities or completely block the flow of information.”
The government also wants bidders to include a capability for consumers to correct errors in their health records, although Kolodner said the correction process would likely be manual at first.
Bidders will also be encouraged to include safety-net providers in their network proposals, Kolodner said.
ONCHIT executives emphasized that the plan calls for giving consumers capabilities to control information in areas where the necessary policy agreements to do so may not exist, especially in areas such as privacy and the integrity of health records.
“It’s important that the technology does not get ahead of policy and that we don’t get into a situation where technology dictates policy,” Kolodner said.
ONCHIT officials believe that introducing the new technical capabilities into the network and focusing on state and regional health information organizations (RHIOs) as hubs for governing the network will yield proposals with the best chance for success.
"It's important to start to [incorporate these capabilities] into the network," said John Loonsk, director of the Office of Interoperability and Standards within OCHIT. “It’s also critical that RHIOs get involved -- that’s where the trust is going to occur.”
ONCHIT has access to about $20 million to fund the second round of NHIN trial implementations, Loonsk said. The money will fund between seven and 14 awards, which should be made this summer, he added.
Loonsk suggested that NHIN may be useful to government organizations whose interests in health information go beyond basic patient look-up and data routing. Agencies with breakthrough requirements, such as in the biosurveillance arena, might be potential subscribers – and funders -- of the network. “Those are the types of areas we see synergies,” Loonsk said.
From the battlefield to the home front: Managing medical data
Government Health IT presents Col. Claude Hines Jr., program manager for the Defense Health Information Management System, in this recent InSight eSeminar. Col. Hines discusses the health information technology and tactical challenges faced by the military medical community in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of conflict. In doing so, he describes the current information technology solutions for transferring clinical data between battlefield care givers to health care personnel at military treatment facilities worldwide.
