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Session 81 at HIMSS09 titled “Help is On the Web: AHRQ’s National Resource Center for HealthIT” detailed the online tools and resources available on AHRQ’s (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) National Resource Center (NRC) for Health IT web site (http://www.healthit.ahrq.gov).

“The web site has turned out to be an extremely important resource for people that are both newly implementing heath IT and who have been implementing health IT as a source where you can go and find what others are doing, what others are learning, and find the tools to help you do what you are doing even better,” commented Caitlin Cusack, MD, MPH, HIT Manager, National Opinion Research Center (NORC) of the University of Chicago, co-presenter of the session.  “It’s nice because it is all freely available and easy to access.”

One tool that has been particularly useful and made available due to numerous requests for sample surveys, is a compendium of such surveys whereby the authors give unrestricted permission for use; as is or modified for local use.  Other tools, such as evaluation toolkits, health IT bibliographies, and emerging lessons, to name only a few, have been developed and made fully accessible for all, as well.

The AHRQ NRC is an essential component of the Department of Health and Human Service’s approach to advance healthcare quality and efficiency through the pervasive adoption of health IT and provides direct funding for the implementation and evaluation of various forms of health IT, including:
•             Electronic Health Records (EHRs),
•             telemedicine,
•             Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE),
•             and Health Information Exchange (HIE).

Furthermore, the AHRQ NRC, as a vital resource, can quickly publish knowledge and best practices observed by the projects it supports, so that successful health IT adoption and usage can be facilitated, allowing health providers, administrators, and researchers to share lessons learned on how best to improve health care quality, safety, and efficiency.  This knowledge is available to the public through informal discussion boards, national teleconferences, peer-reviewed white papers, issue briefs, and official reports.

AHRQ NRC’s website is continually expanding as new resources are constantly being developed and added to the web site on an ongoing basis.  The knowledge library is no exception, filling up with new updates and new resources as well.  Also the resource center, urges Brian Dixon, MPA, Health IT Manager, Regenstrief Institute, AHRQ National Resource Center for Health IT, co-presenter of the session, “is very open to suggestions from the public.  If there are articles on integrating medical devices into an EHR or other types of documents or guides that would help people implement certain types of devices or EHR systems, we would appreciate their suggestions to add to the library.”