As the ONC’s Beacon Communities focus on using IT to improve the quality and efficiency of care, they also have a rare opportunity to spur regional economic growth as they make use of private-sector systems and technology.

At a Tuesday HIMSS11 session titled "Regional Innovation Clusters: The Beacon Communities Examples," a nationally representative panel showed how health IT and a better economy can go hand in hand.

Barry Johnson, senior adviser and director of strategic initiatives at the federal Economic Development Administration, said "innovation-driven clusters" across the country are key to creating quality, lasting jobs. These regions are the "building blocks of national economy."

The 17 Beacon Communities are in prime position to fuel such innovation – to "create jobs, nurture new markets and move innovations into the mainstream," said Jason Kunsman, a project coordinator with the ONC.

[See also: Beacon Community leaders gather in Indianapolis]

“We expect the Beacons to be in hot pursuit of out-of-the-box solutions that can help their communities more rapidly deliver and document the return on their investment,” he said, adding that “$260 million in taxpayer funding is quite a chunk of change, so the spotlight is definitely on these communities."

According to Mary Walshok, a sociology professor at the University of California at San Diego, the Beacon Community there is doing just that.

Walshok is interested in the way communities leverage their industrial legacies, native talent pools and research institutions to create opportunities, upgrading existing jobs and helping to create new ones.

"The Beacon grant in San Diego has brought all the healthcare providers to the table," she said. "And they are in the process of developing shared goals, platforms and practices."

“The changes in the ways healthcare information is collected and used based on the Beacon model are very, very challenging," she added. "Interoperability is not an easy thing – at all.”

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As the process  continued, Walshok said, "it's become clear that increasingly, healthcare systems and communities need intermediaries who are both clinically and technically savvy.” This, she said, has created ample opportunities for cross-fertilization.

For example, the San Diego Beacon project is collaborating with its northern neighbor, Orange County. "As we did an assessment of the full range of industry clusters that could potentially be relevant to the implementation of health IT and wireless," she said, that just made sense. The numbers speak for themselves: More than 1,000 IT and wireless companies, more than 600 medical companies and more than 800 software companies.

"There's been significant private sector leadership" – to the tune of $750,000 in private funding –  "around collaboration and convergence around device diagnostics and medical records," said Walshok. "There's been a lot of start-up and growth companies over the last five years."