Health 2.0 Accelerator: Role of AHRQ in health IT explained by Matt Quinn

Matt Quinn, Health IT Expert at AHRQ is speaking at the Health 2.0 Accelerator in Boston.  AHRQ's mission is "improving quality, security, effectiveness, efficiency of healthcare for all Americans." Click for key points.

Key points:

• $ 36 B earmarked for "meaningful use of health IT" for practices and hospitals, implying use of "certified EMR's". Both "meaningful use" and "certified" EMR are to be defined.
• $1.1 B funds earmarked for comparative effectiveness research as follows:
  • AHRQ: $300M
  • NIH: $400M
  • Office of Sec of HHS: $400 M
• $1.5 m --> Institute of Medicine for list of national priority conditions

DartNet is federated network of electronic health data from 9 physician organizations comprising 500 doctors and 400 k patients, and still growing.

At this meeting, I asked question of how VHA is participating in AHRQ work, as VA was cited as involved, of course. But I still don't understand why their  > 5 million patient EMR history is not looked upon as the example for the rest of the US. Yes I know that the health care professionals are government employees, so that's a major difference, but I remain puzzled as to why there isn't more knowledge and interest in the VA story outside the agency.

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Health 2.0 (as well as the closely related concept of Medicine 2.0) are terms representing the possibilities between health care, eHealth and Web 2.0, and has come into use after a recent spate of articles in newspapers, and by Physicians and Medical Librarians.