Vish Sankaran, HHS, Speaks on Healthcare IT

During the pre-recording of this weeks Federal News Radio Federal Executive Forum, Vish Sankaran, Program Director of Federal Health Architecture, discussed the role of information technology in improving the country’s health care system. These dialogue was great for healthcare management professionals and anyone else in the industry.  Mr. Sankaran insights on the Obama administration efforts in this area included:

• Significant progress has been made in the coordination of efforts between agencies with a health related mission. A clear sign of progress is the coordination between 25 different agencies in establishing the federal health records gateway
• Since it's release in February, the federal health records gateway has received over 46,000 unique hits and over 1300 downloads
• The biggest opportunity we have in health IT today is enabling information to follow the patient, which helps doctors to make better decisions
• Historical challenges around proprietary systems are now being overcome through active participation from the vendor community and the establishment of interoperable open specifications
• A key challenge that needs to be addressed is how to rectify the more stringent FISMA requirements (with approximately 170 controls) with the less restrictive HIPPA regulations (with about 70 controls)

The Federal Executive Forum panel participants were:

• Vish Sankaran- Program Director, Federal Health Architecture, Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Linda Fischetti- RN MS, Health Informatics Architect, Future Health Systems Design and
  Usability, Health Information Architecture, Veterans Health Administration
• Dr. Leslie Lenert- MD, MS, FACMI , Director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics (NCPHI) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Jim Borland- Special Advisor for Health IT, Office of the Commissioner, Social Security Administration (SSA)
• Tom Simmons- Area Vice President for Federal Systems, Citrix Systems
• Ken Rubin- Chief Architect, EDS

The complete panel discussion will be available via a Federal News Radio webcast starting Thursday, June 25th at 2pm (http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?sid=1692826&nid=50) . There is no charge for this event. To receive an email reminder two hours before the webcast starts, please register.


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