Open Source Electronic Health Record Agent (OSEHRA) serving as the central governing body of an Open Source EHR community just announced that Alumni, Matt McCall will be honored at the White House as a Presidential Innovation Fellow on August 23, 2012. McCall is lending his talents to the White House supported “Blue Button for America” project.
Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Jeff Zients, Acting Director for OMB, John Berry, Director of the Office of Personnel Management, and Steve VanRoekel, U.S. Chief Information Officer will be leading the event at the White House. The event begins at 10AM and will be streamed live on www.WhiteHouse.gov/live.
The Presidential Innovation Fellows program was established to bring in top innovators from outside of government to work with top innovators inside of government to create real and substantial changes that will in a very short time frame will be able to benefit the American people.
The “Blue Button for America” project will enable millions of Americans to easily and securely download their own health information electronically with information on medications, claims and treatment data, and lab reports so they can take their complete record with them should they change insurers or providers and share the information with their families or doctors if they choose.
The Department of Veterans Affairs worked with HHS, DOD and others on the project. Today, Blue Button is available to veterans, uniformed service members, and Medicare beneficiaries with almost a million people having downloaded their own health information.
To learn more about Open Source Health IT and to meet some of the key people involved in these initiatives, OSEHRA is holding their first “Annual OSEHRA Open Source EHR Summit & Workshop” at the Gaylord Convention Center, National Harbor Maryland on October 17-18, 2012. For more information, go to www.osehra.org.
