John Glaser, vice president and CIO of Partners HealthCare in Boston, says he should know by the end of the week whether a six-month stint as advisor to healthcare IT czar David Blumenthal, MD, is a go.

"I need to get closure on the role and agreements," Glaser said Wednesday. "Once that's done I'm in a position to work with David Blumenthal and ONC to talk about specific things I would do. But so far  – and appropriately  – they are holding off on those conversations until I am official."

Glaser, a longtime leader on the healthcare IT front, said, "I am really pleased that I will have this opportunity to help work with ONC to move the agenda forward."

The Department of Health and Human Services announced March 20 that Blumenthal would step up to the post of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Blumenthal, who succeeds Robert M. Kolodner, MD, will lead the implementation of a nationwide, interoperable, privacy-protected health information technology infrastructure, as called for in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to HHS.

"As a primary care physician who has used an electronic record to care for patients every day for 10 years, I understand the enormous potential of this technology," Blumenthal said in a statement that accompanied the announcement.

Blumenthal is a well-known policy wonk and a leading scholar on healthcare information technology. His most recent position was as director of the Institute for Health Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital and Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In the 1970s, he served as a staff member on Sen. Edward Kennedy's (D-Mass.) Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.

Glaser is technology chief for Boston-based Partners Healthcare, a large integrated delivery network that includes Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Glaser and Blumenthal are already colleagues, working for the same healthcare network. Glaser could be viewed by the administration as a perfect match to Blumenthal, who brings to the Office of the National Coordinator his medical and policy experience.

Glaser is a fellow of HIMSS, CHIME and the American College of Medical Informatics. He also serves on the editorial board of Healthcare IT News.

Glaser, who declared to the audience at a recent forum on healthcare IT in Boston that he is a Republican, urged caution in the rush for money to implement healthcare IT.

"How does it actually get orchestrated?" he asked the audience at the "Transforming Healthcare Summit 2009," gathered on Feb. 26 to discuss the Obama plan on healthcare IT.

"It's a non-trivial undertaking that takes some thought," he said. "There's a bunch of collateral issues."