October's Health TechNet meeting featured speaker Kathleen Fyffe, Advisor to Dr. David Brailer, the President’s National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Ms. Fyffe discussed Dr. Brailer’s overarching framework and goals for health information technology and the President's goal of implementing electronic medical records for the entire country within ten years. Her discussion focused on the strategic framework, key actions, and the public-private partnership that will be required to establish an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR).
We also had a broader discussion, led by Andy Barbash, Jim Oakes, and our NHII Task Force, of the current state of the National Health Information Infrastructure project, with an eye toward developing a constructive critique for purposes of our work with that project. As part of this discussion, we also heard a presentation by Jay McKutcheon, a long-time industry consultant and a former principal with KPMG. He worked on the design, development and formation of the Michiana Health Information Network, based in South Bend, Indiana, and now is in charge of its operation. He is well-versed in the challenges associated with setting up and running such a network, and will share some of the lessons learned from that experience and other networks around the country.