What is AHRQs role in health IT?
As the lead research agency on the quality, safety, efficiency and effectiveness of health care in the U.S., AHRQ plays a key role in the nation’s efforts to adopt health IT. First, AHRQ helped lay the groundwork for health IT today, through more than 30 years of research to develop medical informatics tools and standards. In addition, AHRQ has helped identify critical patient safety issues and demonstrate the importance of decision support systems for physicians and others in a time of rapidly growing medical findings. In 2002, AHRQ began planning its current health IT initiative, aimed at supporting communities and regions as they plan and implement health IT projects. With a new multi-year, $139 million initiative, AHRQ moved beyond basic research to fund projects that demonstrate and evaluate health IT use for a variety of health care purposes. A major priority is to disseminate new knowledge and best practices from pioneers in this field, so that future users can benefit from thei
