Academia and the Research Community Will Support Health Providers

Awards totaling $84 million to 16 universities and junior colleges will support training and development of more than 50,000 new health IT professionals.

Additionally Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) awards totaling $60 million were provided to four advanced research institutions ($15 million each) to focus on solving current and future challenges that represent barriers to adoption and meaningful use of health IT.

Community College Consortia Program ($36 million):

The Community College Consortia Program provides assistance to five regional recipients to establish a multi-institutional consortium within each designated region. The five regional consortia will include 70 community colleges in total. Each college will create non-degree training programs that can be completed in six months or less by individuals with appropriate prior education and/or experience. First year grant awards are estimated at $36 million. An additional $34 million is available for year two funding of these programs after successful completion of a mid-project evaluation.

Curriculum Development Center ($10 million):

The Curriculum Development Centers will develop educational materials for key health IT topics to be used by the members of the Community College Consortia program. The materials will also be made available to institutions of higher education across the country. One of the centers will receive additional assistance to act as the National Training and Dissemination Center (NTDC) for the curriculum materials.

*(Will also receive the NTDC awards)

University-Based Training Programs ($32 million):

The University-based training programs will produce trained professionals for vital, highly specialized health IT roles. Most trainees in these programs will complete intensive courses of study in 12-months or less and receive a university-issued certificate of advanced training.  Other trainees supported by these grants will study toward masters’ degrees.

Competency Examination Program ($6 million):

This program will support the development and initial administration of a set of health IT competency examinations. The program will create an objective measure to assess basic competency for individuals trained in short-term, non degree health IT programs and for members of the workforce seeking to demonstrate their competency in certain health IT workforce roles.

Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) Program ($60 million):

The SHARP program recognizes the critical importance of research to support improvements in the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare by creating “breakthrough” advances in information technology. The SHARP program targets four areas where improvements in technology are needed. The four SHARP award recipients, their areas of research focus and funding are:

• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill. – Security of Health Information Technology – Developing security and risk mitigation policies and the technologies necessary to build and preserve the public trust as Health IT systems gain widespread use. $15 million.
• The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas – Patient-Centered Cognitive Support – Harnessing the power of Health IT so that it integrates with, enhances and supports clinicians’ reasoning and decision-making. $15 million.
• President and Fellows of Harvard College, Boston, Mass. – Healthcare Application and Network Platform Architectures – Developing new and improved architectures that will leverage benefits of today’s architecture and focus on the flexibility and scalability needs for the future to address significant increases in capture, storage and analysis of data. $15 million.
• Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. – Secondary Use of EHR Data– Strategies to make use of data that will be stored in EHRs for improving the overall quality of health care, while maintaining data privacy and security. $15 million.

Information about the HITECH awards available through the workforce development program is available at http://HealthIT.HHS.gov/ and www.grants.gov.

Health IT for Regional Extension Centers