WASHINGTON – The government today awarded four grants totaling $18.6 million to several healthcare IT networks and technology vendors to begin work on a nationwide system for exchanging medical information.

The groups, led by Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp., IBM and Northrup Grumman, will include healthcare providers and IT developers in three healthcare markets. Each contract winner will develop an architecture and prototype network that would allow hospitals, physicians, laboratories and others in the three areas to electronically share data.

The four contract winners are:

- Eastern Kentucky Regional Health Community, CareSpark in Tennessee and the West Virginia eHealth Initiative will work with Accenture, Apelon, Cisco, CGI-AMS, Creative Computing Solutions, eTech Security Pro, Intellithought, Lucent Glow, Oakland Consulting Group, Oracle, and Quovadx.

- Indiana Health Information Exchange, Massachusetts' MA-SHARE and Mendocino HRE in California will work with CSC, Browsersoft, Business Networks International, Center for Information Technology Leadership, Connecting for Health, DB Consulting Group, eHealth Initiative, Electronic Health Record Vendors Association, Microsoft, Regenstrief Institute, SiloSmashers and Sun Microsystems.

- New York's Taconic Health Information Network and Community, North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance and the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance in Rockingham County, will work with IBM, working with Argosy, Business Innovation, Cisco, HMS Technologies, IDL Solutions, Ingenium and VICCS.

- Santa Cruz, Calif.; RHIO; HealthBridge in Cincinnati, Ohio; and University Hospitals Health System in Cleveland, Ohio, will work with Northrop Grumman, Air Commander, Axolotl, Client/Server Software Solutions, First Consulting Group, SphereCom Enterprises and WebMD.

Each network will test patient identification and record locator services, user authentication, and other technologies. All four groups must be able to communicate with the other networks, David Brailer, MD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology told Healthcare IT News. This will create a single architecture among all of the groups. Many of the networks that won contracts are already established.

The American Health Information Community, a new 17-member federal advisory body made up of public and private sector members, will recommend several "breakthrough" use cases for these networks. For example, one project will focus on ways to transmit information in real-time from emergency departments. The Certification for Health Information Technology will then review the architectures and certify the networks.

The government does not want to mandate any one network for exchanging data, but also wants to avoid the development of networks across the country that don't communicate. Brailer likened the concept to wireless networks, where users can choose various cell phone plans, but can communicate with users on other networks.

Funding for projects falls short

The government had planned on awarding six contracts, but uncertainty over funding for healthcare IT projects in the fiscal year 2006 budget only allowed Brailer's office to award four contracts, he said. The contracts are worth a little less than $5 million each.

"It's a purely monetary issue," said Brailer, who said he believed four contracts are sufficient to test an architecture for a NHIN.

Scott Myers, managing director with Accenture's health and life sciences division, said contract winners would invest some of their own money in the project. He said participants felt that addressing the issues of interoperability in healthcare and establishing a national health network warranted the investment. Myers said it's possible that the contract could be extended for two years. The first year would involve getting the network in place, and the second year would allow contractors to test the network's value.

If Congress grants the full $125 million for healthcare IT projects requested in the White House budget, the government could award more contracts, Brailer said.

Other IT vendors and health networks will be invited to be part of the process and test their own architectures, though they would not be paid, Brailer said.

Health IT moves into implementation

In the coming months, the federal healthcare IT efforts will move into an implementation phase.

"We're at the end of the beginning," Brailer said. "It's going into the marathon, away from the sprint."

The government in October awarded three contracts totaling $17.5 million to develop a method to certify healthcare IT tools, harmonize health information standards and address variations in state privacy and security laws and business policies.