OCI participates in MO-HITECH kick off meetings

Jefferson City, MO - Missouri Governor, Jay Nixon, kicked off a series of meetings on December 2nd that will change the way future healthcare is delivered to Missourians. The Missouri Office of Health Information Technology (MO-HITECH) hosted two days of advisory groups and workshops.

The focus of the activities was to shape the approach and identify the potential impact of the Health Information Exchange (HIE) activities on Missouri stakeholders. Participants included health care providers, health and welfare related state agencies, Missouri Medicaid and Medicare management, insurance companies, and information technology experts. HIEs will enable the sharing of electronic patient records and other health information. This sharing will improve patient care by giving doctors a more complete picture of a patient's history, reduce duplicative procedures, enable faster and easier second opions, and dramatically improving critical care in emergency room settings. Anonymous access by public health agencies to health data will allow faster identification of trends and speedier responses to epidemics such as lately manifested with H1N1.

Dr. Ebrahim Moshiri, OCI founder and CEO, attended the Advisory Committee meeting held the first day. OCI technical staff including Steve Totten and Jeff Schmitz, who participates on the NHIN CONNECT project, lent their expertise on HIEs in the technically oriented sessions. Malcolm Spence Director of Business Development participated in the Legal and Policy, Consumer Engagement and the Business/Operations Workgroups.

For many participants this was their first exposure to issues of the next generation of Health IT. These initial discussions were lively and will be followed up with subsequent meetings in mid-December.

Dr. Moshiri commented: "I was excited by the large number of participants and their engagement with the issues. It is not often we get the opportunity to significantly shape the future direction of something that will improve everyone's lives."