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. 2005 Mar-Apr;12(2):113-20.
doi: 10.1197/jamia.M1685. Epub 2004 Nov 23.

Achievable steps toward building a National Health Information infrastructure in the United States

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Achievable steps toward building a National Health Information infrastructure in the United States

William W Stead et al. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2005 Mar-Apr.

Abstract

Consensus is growing that a health care information and communication infrastructure is one key to fixing the crisis in the United States in health care quality, cost, and access. The National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) is an initiative of the Department of Health and Human Services receiving bipartisan support. There are many possible courses toward its objective. Decision makers need to reflect carefully on which approaches are likely to work on a large enough scale to have the intended beneficial national impacts and which are better left to smaller projects within the boundaries of health care organizations. This report provides a primer for use by informatics professionals as they explain aspects of that dividing line to policy makers and to health care leaders and front-line providers. It then identifies short-term, intermediate, and long-term steps that might be taken by the NHII initiative.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The three dimensions of health care data.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Inter-relations among Electronic Health Record (EHR), Electronic Medical Record (EMR), and Personal Health Record (PHR).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
A mismatch in performance over time: rate of increase in hardware capacity compared with rate of increase in software development productivity. Dark squares represent hardware; light squares represent software development.

References

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