Financial Requirements for the Health Information Environment to be created and maintained:

• The Health Information Environment cannot and should not be built and funded independently of creating incentives for its use. If it is financed without corresponding changes to re-align incentives for its use, providers will remain unlikely to use the sub-networks to support patient care, crippling its success.
• The financial model must result from a combination of sustained public sector investment of core functions, seed funding for novel components and must also result from significant and sustained commitments of private capital.
• The early phase of the Health Information Environment, which could be considered the "build" phase, should include financing for the following activities:
  1. The creation of the SPE and the initial development of the Common Framework
  2. Seed funding of a critical mass of sub-networks that conform to the Common Framework
  3. Financial incentives to providers to adopt HIT that conforms to the Common Framework and to participate in the sub-networks.