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General Resources
The Collaborative Response
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Introduction
What the Health Information Environment is not
- A "Big Bang" Undertaking. Although the need for a Health Information Environment would warrant a "moon-shot" type approach to its building, political and practical realities suggest that an incremental approach would gain more support. Given the complexity, diversity and distributed nature of the existing U.S. health system, an incremental approach that builds on and integrates existing networks is more likely to succeed. Therefore, this is not a "big-bang" approach. Furthermore, the standards, validation mechanisms, and governance structures cannot spring into existence at once. The Health Information Environment should be coordinated and built on a plan that recognizes the need for a learning curve. The lessons learned from developing harbinger regional or other sub-networks can prove and improve approaches, leading to accelerated replication and success based on early experience.
- A Central Data Repository. The Health Information Environment is not based upon a national central repository of patient information. Instead, it is a pathway that facilitates, with appropriate authorization, private and secure information identification and access among regional and other sub–networks. Health information resides with the healthcare providers that generate it and/or with patients themselves.
- A Significant Financial or Technical Barrier to Connectivity. The Health Information Environment minimizes any additional financial or technical barriers (other than the requirement to comply with the Common Framework) to information sharing for patient care.
- Proprietary. The Health Information Environment is not a proprietary network owned and operated by particular stakeholder groups.
- The Applications that Rely on It. Healthcare applications or end-point systems (e.g. EHRs) rely on the Health Information Environment and are important extensions of it, but not strictly part of it. Furthermore, the Health Information Environment is not itself an application.
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