A distinguished group of scholars, policymakers, providers and senior executives from across healthcare will assess progress in leveraging information technology to improve patient care at the annual meeting of The National Alliance for Health Information Technology on May 15 in Washington, DC. While acknowledging some significant milestones, the meeting will largely focus on important remaining challenges, particularly widespread physician adoption of HIT, making productive use of the rich information that connected IT networks promise to deliver and creating competition and innovation that drives more value in healthcare.

"Our members, individually and through this organization, are seeking to help build a new and greatly improved information-driven health system," says Scott Wallace, president and chief executive of the Alliance. "It is far from clear how new information streams and the knowledge they yield will change healthcare's business models or how IT can address seemingly intractable issues in healthcare. But given the safety and quality benefits we already are seeing from the increased use of information technology in recent years, we are staying focused on breaking down barriers, finding answers and building consensus to move forward."

Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg, associate professor at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia and co-author with Michael E. Porter of the best-seller Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-based Competition on Results, will deliver the keynote address. In addition, the meeting will feature a series of panel discussions aimed at pinpointing critical challenges and opportunities, creating consensus and moving closer to the goal of reinventing the U.S. health system. The panel discussions, which will be followed by question-and-answer sessions for attendees, include:
* Ambulatory Health IT Adoption: Different Angles, Different Options
* The Coming Information Trove: Will We Be Able To Use It?
* Competition and Value: Approaching From a Different Angle
* Supply Chain Standards: A Progress Report
* The Medical Home in New Orleans: Developing a Model Implementation


Confirmed panelists include:

* Marlin Chapman, Director of Human Resources, Nissan North America
* Mike Cowan, MD, VADAM USN (retired), Chief Medical Officer, BearingPoint, Inc.
* Lynette Ferrara, Partner, CSC Consulting
* Ed Haislmaier, Senor Research Fellow in Health Policy Studies, The Heritage Foundation

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