BOSTON – Billed as "a one of a kind" event, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will host a national healthcare IT conference Thursday and Friday that is drawing some of the most prominent figures in the industry.

Patrick is slated to open the conference, "Health Information Technology: Creating Jobs, Reducing Costs and Improving Quality," which focuses on states' role in the nationwide effort to convert the healthcare from a largely paper-based industry to one that is automated.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, one of two keynote speakers, will talk about the role of information technology in healthcare reform.

David Blumenthal, MD, the nation's health IT coordinator will follow Sebelius with a talk titled "The State and National Vision for HIT and HIE."

Donald Berwick, MD, president and CEO of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, is also expected to speak at the conference. President Obama has nominated Berwick to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which has been without a permanent chief since 2006.

Massachusetts boasts some of the most technologically connected healthcare facilities in the country – among them Partners HealthCare, founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

While the conference draws on national figures such as Sebelius, Blumenthal and Paul Tang, CMIO of Palo Alto Medical Foundation, it also highlights some Massachusetts-based leaders, including John Halamka, MD, CIO, CareGroup and Harvard Medical School and national leader on healthcare IT standards; Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusets eHealth Collaborative; Daniel Nigrin, MD, CIO of Children's Hospital of Boston; and Barbra Rabson, executive director of Massachusetts Health Quality Partners.

"Massachusetts has been an intellectual, economic, and political leader for healthcare IT for decades," Halamka noted in a recent blog about the governor's conference. "We're now at the tipping point with the funding, momentum, and opportunity to ensure every patient has an electronic health record."

The work ahead will be hard, Halamka said. "Politicians, payers, providers, and patients must work together to make it happen over the next five years."

More than 600 people from 30 states have registered for the conference at the Westin Waterfront Hotel, according to the organizers.

Healthcare IT News will report on the conference from Boston.