I support the notion of planning, expansion of our standards work, acceleration of the Nationwide Health Information Network and a focus on enhanced privacy policy in 2009-2010 followed by rapid implementation beginning in 2011. Some states are ready for rapid implementation now, so my only suggestion would be early additional funding for those states with a plan, staff, and experience doing large EHR rollouts.

Here are the next steps:

* The Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees will mark-up their respective economic recovery packages (which include identical health IT language) on Thursday. A mark-up means the two Committees will go through their respective bills title by title and members will be allowed to offer amendments to the introduced language.

* The bills that come out of Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Appropriations will then be merged together, along with parts of the economic recovery package being considered by other House Committees.

* The entire economic recovery bill will go to the House floor the week of January 26.

* Assuming it passes the House, committees will reconcile the bill with whatever economic recovery package gets approved by the Senate. By all indications, both the House and Senate bills will contain similarly strong health IT provisions.

* Once the House and Senate bills get reconciled, they will go back to the full House and Senate.

* Assuming they are approved, they will go to the President for his signature. The plan is that will happen by President’s Day weekend.

I will do all I can to support this effort. With appropriate policies and requirements to implement interoperable, certified EHRs, the dream of a fully electronic healthcare system in the US will move forward more in the next few years than in my entire career to date.

One caveat. The entire healthcare IT industry had an estimated budget of $26 billion in 2008. Thus, these acceleration funds will nearly match the entire budget of the current industry. As Healthcare IT professionals we will be given the challenge of our lives to implement this much change this fast. It will be like running continuous IT marathons at the peak of our abilities.

My grandparent's generation was known as the "Greatest Generation". We will be the "Greatest Healthcare IT Generation."

Are you ready to change the world? I'm looking forward to it!

John Halamka, MD, blogs regularly at Life As a Healthcare CIO.