Creation of a neural network at the sprawling Health and Human Services Department would help the agency meet the country's most pressing public health challenges, an independent study group said in a new report.

The information technology infrastructure envisioned by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies would be akin to private-sector executive information systems that capture and integrate data across enterprises.

Aggregating and analyzing data dispersed throughout HHS would provide a powerful tool for analyzing, aligning, modifying, developing and discontinuing programs, according to the institute's Committee on Improving the Organization of the Department of Health and Human Services to Advance the Health of Our Population.

The committee was formed this year in response to a request by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Leaders of the House committee had asked the Institute to assess whether HHS is "ideally organized" to fulfill its mission amid rising health care costs and other challenges. The institute's report, "HHS in the 21st Century: Charting a New Course for a Healthier America," identified a number of factors that undermined the effectiveness of HHS, including "divergence in the missions and goals of the department's agencies, limited flexibility in spending, impending workforce shortages, difficulty in retaining skilled professionals, and challenges in effectively partnering with the private sector."

The proposed solution, an agencywide information system of the type envisioned by the Institute, would improve accountability and decision making, as well as adaptability and alignment.

"One of the first things we called for is the identification of clear indicators for the most important national objectives and the ability to collect meaningful information across the enormous range of agencies and programs that would be relevant to each of those key objectives," said committee member Molly Joel Coye, founder and chief executive officer of Health Technology Center, a nonprofit research organization.

The complex nature of many health care problems " tuberculosis, health care for foster children, hospital re-admissions " result in multiple, often uncoordinated initiatives. The goal would be to transform that disparate data into actionable information without having to remake the entire agency.

"It's the need to understand and try to coordinate them rather than shuffling all these programs around," Coye said. "It is not a call for replacing all the information systems at HHS. The committee's report, while very clear and hard-hitting, was appropriately modest in not calling for wholesale reorganization or wholesale replacement of IT systems."