"I have seen that the emergence and convergence of national standards for health information exchange is vital to the improvement of quality and any hoped-for efficiency gains in our country. Back in 2003, Connecting for Health was the first group to get a broad consensus on a suite of foundational standards and these same standards are still central to our work today. Connecting for Health has also been a unique forum for thinking through the architecture that can link together the many valuable local and institutional IT efforts while still achieving vital policy objectives that are so important to those of us delivering care to our patients every day. When we began our work on the Connecting for Health Common Framework in 2004 we did not have a set of widely-accepted rules or tools for moving information among regions. We participated vigorously in the development of the Common Framework with our colleagues in Indiana and California and saw that a "network of networks" was feasible."
John D. Halamka, MD, MS, is Chief Information Officer of the CareGroup Health System, Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, Chairman of the New England Health Electronic Data Interchange Network (NEHEN), CEO of MA-SHARE (the Regional Health Information Organization), Chair of the US Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), and a practicing Emergency Physician.
As Chief Information Officer at CareGroup, he is responsible for all clinical, financial, administrative and academic information technology serving 3000 doctors, 14000 employees and two million patients. As Chief Information Officer and Dean for Technology at Harvard Medical School, he oversees all educational, research and administrative computing for 18000 faculty and 3000 students. As Chairman of NEHEN he oversees the administrative data exchange in Massachusetts. As CEO of MA-SHARE he oversees the clinical data exchange efforts in Massachusetts. As Chair of HITSP he coordinates the process of electronic standards harmonization among stakeholders nationwide.
