"This partnership represents the culmination of what was started when former Senate Majority Leaders Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and George Mitchell (D-Maine) joined me at the Newsmaker Breakfast at the National Press Club in a bipartisan call for a system that will help patients and their doctors understand how to better treat disease," said Kanter, who is also serving as chairman of the partnership. "Through this partnership, we will accelerate research efforts by creating the first major pilot of a distributed research network using personal electronic health records to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare for all Americans."

Supporters believe that a network like this will identify "what works best" in healthcare, by understanding how diseases progress for particular types of patients, identifying safety problems, comparing the benefits and risks of treatment alternatives and comparing different medical practices that may affect quality and cost.

"This new partnership is a critical step for moving from the promise to the reality of better evidence that can improve healthcare," said Mark B. McClellan, MD, director of the Brookings Institution's Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform and an advisor to the effort. "This partnership is a practically-grounded strategy to determine how to leverage electronic health information - such as electronic health records - to help answer key questions about how health policy reforms can promote more effective, personalized care."

What do you think of this type of research network and how it will use EHRs? E-mail Associate Editor Molly Merrill at molly.merrill@medtechpublishing.com.