Coming to Terms:Scoping Interoperability for Health Care

Patricia Gibbons

1/27/2009
(Original Publish Date: 2/7/2007)

The task of improving healthcare information technology is being addressed by many practitioners, vendors, organizations and governments around the world. For example, in his January 2004 State of the Union Address, United States President George W. Bush announced his intention to provide Americans with electronic health records within a decade. Subsequently, in May 2004, Dr. David Brailer was appointed National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. That moment was heralded as a "tipping point" in the progress of health information technology. New organizations had been forming, driven by alarm over the rising cost of care, regional differences in practice patterns, and concerns about patient safety. Non-health industry leaders, such as PepsiCo and General Motors, attributed the high cost of American health care to the inadequate use of information technology (IT) and pressed for more IT investment in the health system. However, dissatisfaction with earlier government-mandated initiatives along with reluctance to fund improvements using public monies prompted an interest in identifying more market-based, consumer-driven incentives to spur HIT investment. This led to the call by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for a National Health Information Infrastructure (NHII) that would be market-driven, self-propelling, and interoperable.