Chicago - As part of a project for the Office of the National Coordinator to define key health information technology (HIT) terms, The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (Alliance), with the guidance and management of BearingPoint Inc. (NYSE: BE), one of the world's largest management and technology consulting firms, will hold public forums to gather industry input during the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in Orlando, Florida.

A forum focused on defining the terms health information exchange (HIE) and regional health information organization (RHIO) will be held Tuesday, February 26 from 4 pm to 6 pm. Another forum focused on defining the terms electronic health record (EHR), electronic medical record (EMR) and personal health record (PHR) will be held on Wednesday, February 27 from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm.

These meetings follow a public forum held January 16 in Washington, DC, where the five HIT terms referenced above were discussed.
Public forum participants will review work-in-progress from the project's Network Work Group and Records Work Group which meet regularly to develop definitions for the five terms. Feedback and perspectives provided during the public forums will make important contributions to the development of consensus-based definitions.

"We are eager to hear all views and include as many industry participants as possible," notes Jane Horowitz, vice president and chief marketing officer for the Alliance, who is leading the project for the Alliance. "Broad industry involvement is critical to forging consensus definitions that will remove a major barrier to HIT adoption."

More information about all three forums as well as the registration form for participants can be found at http://definitions.nahit.org/forums.php . There are no registration fees associated with these events.

About the Alliance
The National Alliance for Health Information Technology is a diverse partnership of senior executives from all healthcare sectors working to advance the adoption of clinical information technology systems to achieve measurable improvements in patient safety, quality of care and operating performance. The Alliance collaborates with healthcare and government leaders to influence healthcare decision-makers to act effectively in creating an efficient, safe, unified, and inclusive health system. Since its founding in 2002, the Chicago-based Alliance has helped forge consensus and accelerate progress on such important initiatives as developing an industry-endorsed interoperability definition, creating a public directory of health IT standards and authoring Rules of Engagement: A proven path for instilling, and then installing a CPOE approach that works. The Alliance is a co-founder of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) and its CEO chaired the Commission on Systemic Interoperability (CSI). More information about the Alliance is available at www.nahit.org .

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