ONC Looking To Beacons For Database Of Insights From HIT Frontier

The 17 Beacon communities around the country that have brought providers together within regions to use health IT and clinical interventions to elicit better patient care have each demonstrated measureable improvements, including for outcomes around chronic disease and preventive screenings.

These health IT model communities, which the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has funded, will wrap up their grant status in 2013. ONC hopes to gain an evidence database from the beacons’ experience to inform its policies and to share with other providers and organizations, according to Janhavi Kirtane, director of ONC’s clinical transformation and dissemination.

“The beacons are exploring new frontiers for health IT, generating a lot of different insights — some clinical, some technical, and some on the measurement side. We’re hoping to connect that with ONC, serving even as test beds for standards and policies,” Kirtane said at a recent meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee...