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HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has enlisted some of the leading universities, community colleges, and major research centers to advance the widespread adoption and meaningful use of healthcare IT.

Awards totaling $84 million to 16 universities and junior colleges will support training and development of more than 50,000 new healthcare IT professionals. Additionally Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) awards totaling $60 million were provided to four advanced research institutions ($15 million each) to focus on solving current and future challenges that represent barriers to adoption and meaningful use of healthcare IT. Both sets of awards are funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. These awards are part of the $2 billion effort to achieve widespread meaningful use of healthcare IT and provide for the use of an electronic health record ( EHR ) for each person in the United States by 2014.

“Training a cadre of new health IT professionals and breaking down barriers to the adoption of meaningful use of healthcare IT are both critical to the national effort to use information technology to realize better patient care,” stated David Blumenthal, MD, MPP, national coordinator for health information technology. “The institutions receiving awards today will develop necessary roadmaps to help health care providers and hospitals implement and effectively use electronic health record.”

Workforce Award recipients, by program area, include:

• Community College Consortia Program ($36 million)
• Curriculum Development Center ($10 million)
• University-Based Training Programs ($32 million)
• Competency Examination Program ($6 million)
• Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program ($60 million)

The SHARP program targets four areas where improvements in technology are needed. The four SHARP award recipients, their areas of research focus and funding are:

•  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill. - Security of Health Information Technology ($15 million)
• The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas - Patient-Centered Cognitive Support ($15 million)
• President and Fellows of Harvard College, Boston, Mass. - Healthcare Application and Network Platform Architectures ($15 million)
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. – Secondary Use of EHR Data ($15 million)

Source : HHS

You can get more details about Healthcare Informatics & its related topics from our Healthcare Informatics User Group.