Speaking in Boston today at the Healthcare Stimulus Exchange Roadshow, Vish Sankaran, director for the Federal Health Architecture Program, outlined his vision for the government's role in promoting broader healthcare IT adoption via the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).

His most salient point: "We don't want the federal government to be in this business forever." The aim, he said, is for government to "raise the bar, tip the market," and then engage with the private sector to help bring the healthcare IT industry to full flower.

One of the chief vehicles for making this happen is the CONNECT software solution, which was developed after 22 federal agencies collaborated to link their health IT systems to the NHIN. An open source program, CONNECT enables public and private IT systems to communicate to the NHIN, and can be downloaded and updated by anyone.

Sankaran said he hoped that this sort of open-source evolution would soon "enable an ecosystem" whereby more and more entities, public and private, connected with the NHIN. Already, he said, beyond federal agencies, some state governments were considering joining NHIN; private sector providers are implementing CONNECT software to link their internal HIT systems; and, so far, more than 20 vendors are planning services and products based on NHIN specifications and the CONNECT software.

In the short term, Sankaran acknowledged that lack of financial resources, lack of technical expertise and lack of infrastructure were significant obstacles to more widespread development of healthcare IT. But, he said, it was imperative to provide incentives for the adoption and efficient use of interoperable EHRs, to "provide guidance in nationwide health IT standards and agreements," and, critically, to "engage the consumer" in these new developments.

It's an "evolutionary path," Sankaran said, but "we have to start somewhere." And the way forward was with programs like CONNECT (connectopensource.org) and PopHealth, a new open-source tool to monitor and report on population health whose source code is due to be unveiled at HIMSS10 in Atlanta.

"What can federal agencies do to transform healthcare?" The simplest answer, Sankaran said, is to help "make information a force multiplier to foster innovation and meet goals" – just as countless private sector companies have used IT to "unleash the power of information to transform their businesses."

Yes, he conceded, "these are big, big, big tasks." But the opportunities are just as enormous. Healthcare is a $2.1 trillion industry that's in the process of being fundamentally transformed. From applications to services to hardware, he said, there are countless opportunities for the private sector to follow the government's lead.
 
"These are not Star Wars concepts," Sankaran joked. "Maybe in healthcare, but this is happening in other industries…. They're talking about 3D TV in your house, and we're still struggling to figure out how to move information from point A to point B."

Ultimately, Sankaran said he was confident. Even compared to just six years ago, when "there was less discussion, less market engagement," today the environment is different. With Capitol Hill, the Obama administration and the private sector more engaged than ever, "the stars are well aligned."

For more information about the Healthcare Stimulus Exchange, visit www.healthstimulusx.com.