Exclusive HCTR Video Interview: Program Director for Federal Health Architecture

Apparent at this week's meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) was the healthcare industry's focus on creating, populating and sharing electronic medical records. Spurred by ARRA stimulus funds, hospitals and physicians are searching the vendor community for ways to eliminate wasteful redundancy and improve care.

How home health care and hospice will be able to participate in that new world is becoming more clear. To gain a seat at the table, to earn the right to have their patient databases interface with those of large healthcare systems, they will have to knock on the door, invite themselves to that table and join the planning discussions.

This is not some conclusion drawn by attending a few education sessions and walking the aisles of the vast HIMSS exhibit hall. This is the exact response to a specific question about home care's role in the coming connected healthcare world, put to the number two person in the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) of Health Information Technology.

Vish Sankanran is the Program Director for Federal Health Architecture with the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. He reports directly to Dr. David Blumenthal. Vish sat down with editor Tim Rowan during the Atlanta meeting to desribe to the home care community exactly how to join the conversation and let the ONC know what it needs.

Their 20-minute conversation was recorded on our portable video equipment and is available now. Click here to launch video viewer.

The recording was done in a HIMSS press room cubicle, where there were background conversations caught by our microphones so we apologize for the quality of this one. The web site Vish recommends in the middle of the interview is http://healthit.hhs.gov.