OHSU hosts Rep. Wu's press conference announcing $20 billion for Health IT
Posted Mar 09, 2009
On Feb.19, Congressman David Wu announced the passage of his health information technology (IT) legislation as part of the federal stimulus package at a press conference hosted by OHSU. William Hersh, MD, Chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology in the School of Medicine, and OHSU President Joe Robertson were part of the press conference.
Congressman Wu has been a long-time champion of health IT workforce training and Dr. Hersh has worked closely with him on this topic for several years. In fact, the relevant legislation introduced by Congressman Wu was named after an on-line course developed at OHSU in partnership with the American Medical Informatics Association called 10x10 ("ten by ten"), referencing its ambitious goal to train 10,000 people in basic medical informatics by the year 2010. Congressman Wu's "10,000 Trained by 2010 Act" passed the House of Representatives in 2007, but did not receive further action until recently when it was included in the economic recovery legislation.
The economic recovery package allocates nearly $20 billion to improve the computerization of health care. Of that, $2 billion is set aside for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, which will spend a portion of the funds on workforce training.
"In Oregon, we have national leaders working in all areas of health IT," said Congressman Wu at the press conference, "and the state is home to institutions of higher education that are developing the curriculum necessary to create a highly skilled health IT workforce and train current health care professionals in the latest technology. Health IT is a ready-made economic stimulus that will be especially effective here in Oregon."
"Although the primary goal of using this technology is to improve human health, health care, public health and biomedical research, we cannot lose sight of the high-skill, high-paying jobs that its implementation provides," said Dr. Hersh during the press conference.
