Applying Lessons Learned in Community Collaboration to Health IT

Project Details -
Completed

Establishing systems for exchange of electronic data presents technical and financial challenges and challenges stakeholder collaboration. Approaches that create mutual benefits, meet competing needs, and generate operating efficiencies need to be identified. This project focused on how models of community planning and development in health care and other industries can be used to establish sustainable Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs). It sought to identify characteristics that distinguish successful and unsuccessful collaborations to guide future RHIO and HIE development.

The objectives of the project were to:

  • Conduct a comprehensive literature review on community planning and development as well as RHIO and HIE initiatives. 
  • Convene an innovation meeting comprised of RHIO and HIE leaders and national and international community planning experts to assess the applicability of community collaboration models to sustainable RHIOs and HIE, and to identify best practices, illustrative models, and case studies. 

The project team convened a meeting of stakeholders to obtain input on best practices for collaboration. In preparation for the meeting, the project team developed a background report that includes a literature review and dissemination plan. Based on the literature review and meeting outcomes, the team developed a summary of best practices and recommendations for establishing and sustaining RHIOs and HIEs.