Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has announced the award of contracts totaling $22.5 million to nine health information exchanges (HIEs) to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).
The contracts are intended to advance the nation toward the president’s goal of most Americans having access to secure electronic health records by 2014, by creating a secure foundation for health information exchange that can follow Americans throughout their lives.
These contractors will participate in the NHIN Cooperative--a collaborative to test and demonstrate the exchange of private and secure health information among providers, patients, and other healthcare stakeholders.
Interim NHIN results will be shared through three public forums and other public demonstrations of real-time information exchange at the end of the first contract year (September 2008). Once created, the NHIN health information exchanges’ specifications and related testing materials will be placed in the public domain to facilitate widespread participation in the developing the NHIN. Read the press release.
