IT Services News

President-elect Barack Obama said he wants the federal government to invest in electronic health records so all medical records are digitized within five years.
Obama announced the plans and the deadline during a speech at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., on Thursday.

Since President George W. Bush called for health records to be stored electronically by 2014, Obama’s announcement confirms his administration’s plans to continue pushing for that deadline.

However, Obama’s speech indicated he wants all Americans’ health records to be stored electronically, while Bush specified that "most" Americans’ health information should be stored electronically. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology assumed President Bush’s statement meant he wanted more than half of American health records to be stored electronically.

Former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle, Obama’s choice for Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, also indicated strong IT support for health information technology during his Senate confirmation hearings last week. He said it was an "embarrassment" that the United States lacks an interoperable system for electronic health records.

A similar, multibillion dollar effort in the U.K. has shown mixed results to date.