Towards health IT standards adoption: A web-based resource of health IT applications and projects in public health

(1) Background: In 2009, the Public Health Data Standards Consortium (PHDSC) developed a Business Case on the Role of Public Health in HIT Standardization that describes heath IT (HIT) standardization phases, entities and the strategy for participation of public health representatives in this process. PHDSC has been building a Web-based Interactive Model: Public Health in HIT Standardization to serve as an educational and informational resource on HIT adoption in public health. (2) Objective/purpose: The PHDSC Model is aimed to assist public health decision makers and practitioners to participate in the national HIT discussions and in making their choices in HIT implementations. (3) Methods: A focus group of nationally recognized public health experts identified four components (modules) of the Model: 1-HIT Standards, 2-HIT Adoption Stories, 3-Public Health in HIT Standardization, and 4-Public Health Needs for HIT. The PHDSC project team had launched two of these Modules to date. (4) Results: Module on HIT Standards launched in 2009 contains over 100 web-pages on HIT standards on HIT standards categories, standardization phases and entities. Module on HIT Adoption Stories is a web-based tool for collecting descriptions of HIT projects from health professionals. These descriptions are assembled in a database which was made available for public query over the Internet. Over 300 stories were contained in the Module database when the website was launched in February 2011. Additional stories continue to be added by project staff and outside viewers to improve the comprehensiveness of the story searches. The HIT projects span the range of public health domains, its essential services, information technologies and standards. (5) Discussion/conclusions: The PHDSC Web-Model is in its early stages. With the input from the broader public health community, additional features of this web-based resource will be developed including online collection of functional requirements for public health IT projects.