Posted January 16, 2008 by Lygeia Ricciardi
The recently released budget for ONC—the Office of the National Coordinator (for Health IT)—remains the same as last year: $61.3 million. It didn’t receive the dramatic boost requested by President Bush (who asked for $117.9 million).
Though National Coordinator Robert Kolodner vows to “keep making progress”, anticipated work in a couple of areas will be curtailed, including the build out of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), for which expansion to additional communities had been planned, and work on defining the architecture of personal health records.
While in general I favor greater federal support for health information exchange, I tend to agree with Chillmark Research’s assessment of the budgetary flatlining – at least as it applies to PHRs. In short, PHRs and HIT in general will be “saved from meddling”. As Chillmark blogger John Moore points out, there are numerous other private sector and NGO efforts underway (he mentions Project HealthDesign among them) that are likely to be more relevant and effective in helping PHRs to progress.
When it comes to defining the platform architecture, technical features, and the like for PHRs, I strongly believe the private sector should take the lead, and government should avoid doing anything to hamper creative development. This is not to say that there isn’t a crucial role for the feds to play—notably in the area of defining legal and regulatory parameters to protect public privacy, as well as in making new tools and services available to underprivileged populations.
Though ONC is unlikely to make any dramatic moves affecting PHRs, and indeed major policy shakeups of any kind are unlikely in an election year, I am still keeping my eye on the Wired for HealthCare Quality Act, which I really do think is likely to pass this year.
Regardless of what happens in the federal government, we can look forward to June, when Project HealthDesign grantees unveil their prototype PHR applications at a DC event that culminates their 18-month journey. Stay tuned for more details!
