AHIC Workgroups

Welcome to the American Health Information Community (the Community) Workgroups Web site.

On September 13, 2005, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael O. Leavitt announced the membership for the American Health Information Community (the Community). The Community was formed to help advance efforts to reach President Bush’s call for most Americans to have electronic health records within ten years. The Community is a federally-chartered advisory committee and provides input and recommendations to HHS on how to make health records digital and interoperable, and assure that the privacy and security of those records are protected, in a smooth, market-led way.

To access the website for the Community please go to: www.hhs.gov/healthit/ahic

The Community decided at its November 29, 2005 meeting to form workgroups in the following areas: biosurveillance, consumer empowerment, chronic care, and electronic health records. Subsequently, at the May 16, 2006 Community meeting, two additional groups were formed: the Biosurveillance Data Steering Group as a sub-workgroup within the Biosurveillance Workgroup (renamed Population Health and Clinical Care Connections Workgroup), and the Confidentiality, Privacy & Security Workgroup, which was created as a cross-cutting workgroup responsible for an issue relevant to all the workgroups. More recent, at the August 1, 2006, meeting, the Community formed the Quality Workgroup to address the need for the development of quality measures; and at the October 31, 2006, meeting, the Personalized Healthcare Workgroup was formed to develop and make recommendations on standards for interoperable integration of genomic test information into personal e-health records.

Workgroup meetings are open to the public. Notices for each meeting appear in the Federal Register. Members of the public can listen to the meetings via the Web. Details on how to access each Workgroup meeting are available under that Workgroup’s page on this Web site. The public has the opportunity to submit comments at the end of each meeting. In addition, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT provides a conference room at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., in which the public can listen to the meetings. Registration is not required for these meetings. To attend a meeting in an HHS building, members of the public must sign in at the Security Desk at the building entrance, and provide identification which includes a photograph.

To access the web page for the Community please go to:
www.hhs.gov/healthit/ahic.html.

The calendar of upcoming Community and Workgroup meetings (January - December 2008) is available here:

• PDF format (146KB)
• MS Word format (134KB)

Documents in PDF format require the Adobe Acrobat Reader®. If you experience problems with PDF documents, please download the latest version of the Reader®.

Documents in DOC format require Microsoft Word® or Microsoft Word Viewer®. If you experience problems with DOC documents, please download Word Viewer 2003®.

The Department of Health and Human Services strives to make information available to all. In some cases, due to size or complexity, we are not able to make files fully accessible using assistive technology. If you need assistance with any files, please call us at 1-866-776-5187 or email us at ahic@hsrnet.com.