Announcements Archive
Announcements Archive
The Role of Information Infrastructure in Public Health
Oct 31 2008William A. Yasnoff, MD, PhD
Managing Partner, NHII Advisors, Arlington, VA, Adjunct Professor, Health Scienc
William A. Yasnoff, MD, PhD,
Managing Partner, NHII Advisors, Arlington, VA, Adjunct Professor, Health Sciences Informatics, Johns Hopkins University will speak on November 6, 2008 at 2:00PM in the DeWeese Auditorium, McKnight Brain Institute.
Contact: Kathryn St. Croix at 392-2321 or stcrokl@medicine.ufl.edu
http://ctsi.ufl.edu/
It is widely recognized that the U.S. health care sector needs a Health Information Infrastructure (HII), to reduce errors, improve quality and increase efficiency by assuring immediate availability of complete patient information and decision support. In addition, HII has immense potential benefits to public health, including being critical to preparedness. A local or regional approach involving sharing of electronic records among all health care organizations and providers has been advocated by stakeholders, and HII development efforts are now underway in communities across the nation. However, no clear path leading to success for these projects has been defined. At least three heretofore insoluble problems must be simultaneously overcome: 1) protecting privacy by giving patients control over their health care information; 2) providing financial incentives to office-based physicians for use of electronic health record (EHR) systems; and 3) assuring overall financial sustainability. A central community repository for medical record information paid for and controlled by patients known as a Health Record Bank (HRB) can address these challenges. It is low cost, simple to operate, and greatly reduces many of the vexing and time-consuming organizational, legal, governance, and technical issues that have been problematic in current implementation efforts. The HRB model can accelerate community progress toward the goal of delivering complete patient information at any point of care, and ultimately provide most of the clinical input required for public health activities.
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