ROCHESTER, MN – Health information technology will top the agenda at the Mayo Clinic Thursday morning at a news conference led by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken; U.S. Reps. Tim Walz, Betty McCollum and Ron Kind; and Mayo Clinic President and CEO, John Noseworthy MD, will join Sebelius to highlight Mayo Clinic's patient-centered, high-value care approach as well as its health information technology efforts.

The news conference is scheduled for 10 a.m. at the Mayo Clinic Cancer Education Center.

Mayo Clinic, recognized by The Leapfrog Group as one of the best health systems in the country, is known as a leader on the information technology front.

The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minn., recently received a $12.2 million Beacon Community grant, one of 15 federal grants awarded to communities and organizations across the country to serve as models for healthcare IT use.

Mayo Clinic will use the grant on work to enhance patient management and to reduce costs associated with hospitalization and emergency services for patients with diabetes and childhood asthma. It will also work to reduce health disparities for underserved populations and rural communities.

Mayo Clinic also received $15 million from the federal SHARP program (Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects) to study the secondary use of EHR data. It aims to develop strategies to make use of data that will be stored in EHRs to improve the overall quality of healthcare, while maintaining data privacy and security.

Mayo Clinic is partnered with GE Healthcare and Intel on a yearlong study evaluating the benefits of remote monitoring devices for home-based patient care.

Recently Mayo Clinic announced it would integrate Mayo Clinic EmbodyHealth, a personal health management portal, with the Dossia Personal Health Platform.