On November 5, 2013, Bloomberg convened their first annual health care summit titled “Mind the Gap: Connecting Health Care Policy with Next Century Innovation.” Panelists included health care innovators, medical professionals, and government officials technology to discuss the redesign of the U.S. health care system with health IT.

On December 9, 2013, eHealth Initiative (eHI) held a lunch briefing on Capitol Hill for health policy staffers and leaders in the health IT community. The briefing, titled “Health IT: Supporting the Movement Towards Outcomes-Driven Medicine” presented an overview of the current issues and challenges on adopting and using health IT for hospitals, patients, and health information exchange entities.

On Thursday, June 20th, eHealth Initiative (eHI) collaborated with the HIMSS Foundation’s Institute for e-Health Policy to host a lunch briefing entitled: “Issues and Opportunities Toward Interoperable EHRs for Rural and Underserved Healthcare Organizations.”

The Health IT Policy Committee meets monthly to make recommendations to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) on a policy framework for the development and adoption of a nationwide health information infrastructure, including standards for the electronic exchange of health information. This summary pertains to the August 7, 2013 meeting involving updates from the FDASIA Workgroup, the Privacy & Security Tiger Team, the Meaningful Use (MU) Workgroup, the data analytics team, and the Information Exchange (IE) Workgroup.

The Health IT Standards Committee meets monthly to make recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use of health information. This summary pertains to the August 22, 2013 meeting involving updates from the Implementation Workgroup, NwHIN Power Team, Standards and Interoperability (S&I) Framework, and from ONC Policy & Programs.