Connecting for Health
Date Initiated: June 21, 2002
Connecting for Health is a public-private collaborative designed to address
the barriers to development of an interconnected health information infrastructure.
The ability to deliver medical information where and when it is needed in a private and
secure manner will help to improve the quality of care, reduce medical
errors, lower costs and empower patients.
The first phase of the Collaborative's work drove consensus on the adoption of an initial set of
data standards, developed case studies on privacy and security, and helped define the electronic
personal health record (PHR). More recently Connecting for Health developed an incremental Roadmap
("Achieving Electronic Connectivity in Healthcare...") intended to lay out near-term actions necessary to achieving electronic connectivity.
To carry out its work, Connecting for Health organized several working groups focusing on
understanding the business and organizational issues of community-based information exchange,
sharing electronic information with patients, and several aspects of
technical interoperability. See the column on the right side of this page for links to the Roadmap report
and the reports of the individal working groups.
Connecting for Health was established by the Markle Foundation and receives additional funding
and support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
For more information on Connecting for Health, please visit
www.connectingforhealth.org.
