Europe Union provides HIT model
By Jeff Rowe, Editor
Just yesterday, we pointed to the request some healthcare experts are making for a roadmap from federal officials that would lay out a more incremental move toward meaningful use standards.
Today, as if on cue, we came upon news of an initiative in Europe that may provide a model.
According to a report from eHealth Europe, officials of the European Union have unveiled a plan to push the EU further down the digital road, with a considerable focus on spreading the use of HIT.
As part of an overall Digital Agenda, EU officials “aim to ‘increase safety and medical assistance to Europeans, for instance in an emergency abroad, by defining a minimum set of health information to be included on patient records that can be accessed electronically anywhere in the EU.’”
That aspect of the plan will sound familiar to healthcare stakeholders on this side of the Atlantic, but one must remember that such a plan in the EU has to take into account upwards of two dozen different languages.
While the Digital Agenda encompasses much more than just healthcare, what caught our eye was the timeline –described in a “Key Initiatives” PDF -- for the overall implementation. It looks ahead ten years, but lays out Key Actions for the early years and Key Performance Targets for the years toward the end of the plan.
In other words, stakeholders in the various categories can get a look at what the requirements and expectations are, and then they can plan accordingly.
To be fair, policy discussions within groups such as ONC’s HIT Policy Committee have certainly included tentative timelines, but, to the best of our knowledge, no one has produced, even in draft form, a plan that looks with any clarity 10 years down the road.
No doubt, like all agendas, the EU’s Digital Agenda is subject to change. But at least affected stakeholders can look at the scheme and figure out the tentative steps they need to take in order to fit into it.
For US healthcare providers puzzling through the future of meaningful use, that might be a useful tool. |
发表于 2010-6-5 07:47:21
