The President's 2007 budget allocates
$5.5 billion for developing a ?federal health architecture?
(FHA). According to the budget-report section titled "Analytical
Perspectives," the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) continues to work through the Office of the National Coordinator
for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) to develop the FHA. The report states, "Throughout
the coming year, the Administration will continue to focus on
the improvement of the quality and efficiency of health care
by ensuring the appropriate steps are taken to eventually
enable Federal health information technology systems to share
health information amongst Federal agencies, with the
private sector, and with other governmental entities. Specifically,
the Administration will focus on the areas of standards implementation,
additional standards development and harmonization, alignment
of agency investments, and increased interoperability" (emphasis
added).
ONCHIT's website gives an overview
of its goal of making health information "interoperable" so
that it can be exchanged more easily: "The Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative
will establish a portfolio of existing clinical vocabularies
and messaging standards enabling federal agencies to build interoperable
federal health data systems. This commonality will enable all federal agencies to 'speak the same language'
and share that information without the high cost of translation
or data re-entry. Federal agencies could then pursue projects
meeting their individual business needs aimed at initiatives
such as sharing electronic medical records and electronic patient
identification" (emphasis added).
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