HHS spends $60 million to find EMR obstacles

The Department of Health and Human Services is working harder to help find barriers to adoption of electronic health records and to fix them. Dr. David Blumenthal, HHS' national coordinator for health information technology, announced a $60 million research program to help find the obstacles and come up with ways to eliminate them.

Applicants are invited to apply to the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program to evaluate how to overcome hurdles to widespread adoption of digital records.

The funding will be used for "focused research in critical areas where breakthrough advances are needed to address existing barriers to the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology," according to a news release.

Electronic medical records are an important component of President Obama's pledge to help cut the deficit and make healthcare universal. He argues that EMRs are an essential part of the health reform overhaul that he's seeking. He has earmarked $9 billion to make it a reality.

For more on finding the EMR barriers:
- see this Washington Technology article

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