News Release

HHS Awards Grant to Secure Health Information Technology Advancement In the Private Sector

HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt announced today, during a meeting of the American Health Information Community (AHIC), that LMI Consulting of McLean, Virginia, in association with the Brookings Institution (Brookings), has been awarded a grant to establish, as a successor to the AHIC, a self-sustaining, public-private partnership based in the private sector. The LMI-Brookings team is expected to fully establish the AHIC's successor -- AHIC 2.0 -- by December 2008.

"I am confident that this partnership has the experience needed to convene a successful organization to advance adoption of health IT in the United States," Secretary Leavitt said. "By securing a successor to the AHIC in the private sector while maintaining broad public-private collaboration, we will help to ensure that the health IT standards process is truly self-sustaining."

The grant recipient, LMI Consulting, is a not-for-profit government consulting firm with 50 years of experience in providing management and logistical support to complex projects. The Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution is a world-class leader in objective policy analysis, and will provide its services and expertise to this project at no cost to the federal government.

Together, the team will develop a two-stage collaborative process to ensure that all key stakeholders in the public and private sectors are engaged and represented. Stage one will focus on stakeholder outreach and the design and development of governing documents for AHIC 2.0. This phase is expected to take approximately four months, and HHS has allocated $2 million to this stage. Upon successful completion of phase one, phase two will be funded with $3 million to successfully establish the AHIC 2.0 by December 2008. Additional funding may be allocated to support operations of the AHIC 2.0 once it is established.

"The successful establishment of AHIC 2.0 in the private sector will ensure long-term success in the development of a nationwide health information network, said Dr. Robert Kolodner, national coordinator for health information technology. The progress that we are seeing today will continue through 2008 and beyond as we move to a more visible phase of our work in expanding access to interoperable health IT."

To learn more about the AHIC successor and HHS' health IT initiative visit http://www.hhs.gov/healthit. More information on the Brookings Institution is available at http://www.brookings.edu/. More information on LMI is available at http://www.lmi.org/.

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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.

Last revised: January 22, 2008