Who’s Who and What’s What in Health Information Technology

Prof. Bill Hersh, Professor and Chair, Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology, Oregon Health & Science University has drafted what I consider an important foundational document related to HIT initiatives by the incoming U.S. administration.

This document defines the "who's who" and "what's what" of personnel involved in Health IT.

His draft is at this link (pdf).

Dr. Hersh writes:

Health information technology (HIT) has become a hot topic! This is mainly because President-elect Obama has decided to include "computerization of health care" in his economic stimulus package. On three occasionals in the last month (Dec. 6th, Jan. 3rd, and Jan. 8th), he has personally stated the value of HIT both in improving health care and creating jobs. The Jan. 8th statement set a goal of all Americans having their medical records in electronic form within five years.

Dr. Hersh has drafted a document meant for policy makers and other that attempts to define all of the terms related to HIT personnel (the "who" and the "what") and put them in context. He believes it is important to get something "out there" before terms and identities of contributors and stakeholders become blurred or mangled.

I believe anyone interested in the improvement of healthcare through IT should be aware of this "ecosystem" of health IT enablers and facilitators.

In my opinion, if policymakers in Washington do not understand these basic fields and roles, let alone more complex and critical issues affecting HIT, we can almost be guaranteed that major difficulties will occur in any national HIT initiative the new administration might undertake.

This would be in part due to misallocation of leadership, management, design, and operational roles, and the resultant WWW Phenomenon (the Wrong people making the Wrong decisions at the Wrong time.)

-- SS