[IEEE-bhpjobs] [Fwd: HHS Awards Contracts to Develop Nationwide Health Information Network]

[esther L]

This award of contracts for developing NHIN ties into the topic of the 
EMBS meeting in RTP last night.
The 4 consortia which won awards are:
- CSC
- Northrop Grumman
- IBM
- Accenture

---- Esther Lumsdon, RAC

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: HHS Awards Contracts to Develop Nationwide Health Information 
Network
Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 12:32:11 -0500
From: Kathryn Jensen <kathryn.jensen at HHS.GOV>
Reply-To: Kathryn Jensen <kathryn.jensen at HHS.GOV>
To: HEALTH-IT at LIST.NIH.GOV

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced today the award of contracts totaling
$18.6 million to four groups of health care and health information
technology organizations to develop prototypes for a Nationwide Health
Information Network (NHIN) architecture.  The contracts awarded to these
four consortia will move the nation toward the President’s goal of 
personal electronic health records by creating a uniform architecture 
for health care information that can follow consumers throughout their 
lives.

The four consortia are led respectively by Accenture, Computer Sciences
Corporation (CSC), International Business Machines (IBM), and Northrop
Grumman.  Each consortium is a partnership between technology developers
and health care providers in three local health care markets.  Each 
group will develop an architecture and a prototype network for secure 
information sharing among hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies and 
physicians in the three participating markets.  Once created, the 
architecture design for each of the networks will be placed in the 
public domain to stimulate others to develop further innovative 
approaches to implementing health information technology.

Each of the four consortia will design and implement a standards-based
network prototype during the coming year.  The prototypes will test
information locator services, patient authentication, security 
protections and specialized network functions, as well as test the 
feasibility of large-scale deployment.  The work of the consortia will 
inform deliberations of
the American Health Information Community (the Community), a new federal
advisory committee chaired by Secretary Leavitt, which is charged with
providing input to HHS and the industry on how to make health records
digital and interoperable.

These contracts complete the foundation for an interoperable, standards-
based network for the secure exchange of health care information.  HHS
previously has awarded contracts to create processes to harmonize health
information standards, develop criteria to certify and evaluate health 
IT products, and develop solutions to address variations in business 
policies and state laws that affect privacy and security practices that 
may pose challenges to the secure communication of health information.

For more details regarding the announcement of the NHIN prototype 
awards, please see the Office of the National Coordinator for Health 
Information Technology’s web site at http://www.hhs.gov/healthit.




-- 
-- Esther L.,  esther-L at mailsnare.net or esther-L at alumni.virginia.edu
Speaking only for myself.


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