Reading the Washington Post today, I was shocked at one of the op-eds. Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services — i.e., the highest-ranking health official in the United States and a member of President Bush’s cabinet — had this to say about health IT:
Congress is considering adding money for health information technology to January’s stimulus package. Doing so could spur a critical mass of the nation’s doctors to finally enter the information age, but unless the funds are tied to standards for the interoperability of health IT systems, the expenditure could do more harm than good. …
If stimulus money supports a proliferation of systems that can’t exchange information, … [c]ritical information will remain trapped in proprietary systems, unable to get to where it’s needed.
Health IT systems produce value when they are interoperable. …
We’ve also established an independent, voluntary, private-sector certifying body, the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). This body provides “gold standard” certification that electronic health records meet existing interoperability standards. Any stimulus money for electronic health records should go only to those with CCHIT certification. …
It is important that standards be vendor-neutral. Government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. …
I can’t comment on the merit of the specific standards in question: I’m not familiar with them. But it’s fantastic to see a top-ranking government official espousing the value of interoperability in such a high-profile way. This is the kind of thinking that should drive our public sector — and our society — toward open standards, open formats, and open protocols.