Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) Announcement regarding Contracts and Requests for Proposals
In order to take the next critical step toward realizing the President’s goal of widespread interoperable EHR adoption, the Secretary of HHS has initiated the next phase of the Department’s health IT strategy. This phase will unfold over the next 500 days and includes convening leaders to coordinate public and private health IT efforts, developing strategies, contracting for studies, and funding prototypes and demonstrations to enable health IT. To implement the Department's health IT strategy, HHS issued four requests for proposals (RFPs).

Summary of Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Request for Information (RFI) Responses
On November 15, 2004, in an effort to gain broad input regarding the best mechanisms to achieve nationwide interoperability to meet the goal of interconnecting clinicians so that they can exchange health information, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a Request for Information (RFI). The RFI encouraged the public to explore the role of the Federal government in facilitating deployment of a nationwide health information network, or NHIN, how it could be governed, financed, operated, and how it could be supported by and coordinated with regional health information exchange projects. 512 organizations and individuals provided nearly 5,000 pages of information. This report summarizes those responses.

Training Health Care Professionals to Serve as Local Informatics Leaders and Champions
The AMIA 10x10 will utilize curricular content from existing informatics training programs and other AMIA educational initiatives with a special emphasis toward those programs with a proven track record in distance learning. The content will provide a framework but also cover plenty of detail, especially in areas such as electronic and personal health records, health information exchange, standards and terminology, and health care quality and error prevention.

CPOE Progress: No Guts, No Glory
Adoption of CPOE in teaching facilities tends to be more successful. That’s because doctors are on the payroll and more susceptible to management edicts, compared with non-teaching hospitals where physicians need coaxing rather than coercion to use CPOE systems. Second, though the applications can provide numerous clinical and administrative benefits, installing it, and getting physicians to use it, is a very tough task for any organization.

FINAL WEEK OF VOTING for Modern Healthcare's 4th annual ranking of the 100 Most Powerful People in Healthcare
Voting will remain open until midnight Central time Friday, June 24

Health Information Technology and Physician-Patient Interactions: Impact of Computers on Communication During Outpatient Primary Care Visits
The exam room computers appeared to have positive effects on physician-patient interactions related to medical communication without significant negative effects on other areas such as time available for patient concerns.

Emotional Aspects of Computer-based Provider Order Entry: A Qualitative Study
Designing and implementing CPOE systems is difficult. These systems, and the implementation process itself, often inspire intense emotions. If designers and implementers fail to recognize that various CPOE features and implementation strategies can increase clinicians' negative emotions, then the systems may fail to become a routine part of the clinical care delivery process. We might alleviate some of these problems by designing positive feedback mechanisms, for both the systems and the organizations.