Transforming Health Care Through Information Technology

Abstract

In Transforming Health Care Through Information Technology the PITAC offers six key recommendations that could significantly expand access to health care, improve its quality, reduce its costs, and transform the conduct of biomedical research. The PITAC sees these recommendations as critical steps toward addressing the challenges that exist to improving Americans' health and health care: *Establish pilot projects and Enabling Technology Centers to extend the practical uses of information technology to health care systems and biomedical research; *NIH, in close collaboration with NSF, DARPA, and DOE, should design and deploy a scalable national computing and information infrastructure to support the biomedical research community; *Congress should enhance existing privacy rules by enacting legislation that assures sound practices for managing personally identifiable health information; Establish programs to increase the pool of biomedical research and health care professionals with training at the intersection of health and information technology; *DHHS should outline its vision for using IT to improve health care and subsequently devote the resources to conduct the IT research critical to accomplishing these goals in the long term; and *DHHS should appoint a senior information technology leader to provide strategic leadership across DHHS and focus on the importance of information technology in addressing pressing problems in health care