What Meaningful Use Can Do

Meaningful use is being debated in Washington, but its possible impacts on health care delivery and outcomes are being discussed widely. John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and CIO at Harvard Medical School, has some ideas and does about as good a job in clearly identifying them.

On Wednesday, in his blog Life as a Health Care CIO, he wrote about how meaningful use will drive interoperability - which means hospitals and doctors can exchange information to determine better treatments. Once standards in electronic health records are established, possibilities such as public health agencies can track the real-time spread of diseases like H1N1. Or organizations that follow health care quality for physicians will be able to provide more meaningful data.

There still is the big hurdle to clear of convincing the public that their health data is not directly traced back to an individual.