U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt signed an agreement Jan. 23 meant to strengthen the sharing of healthcare data and technology between the two countries.
"While we have very different health care delivery systems and payment models, we both face similar challenges posed by aging populations, increased levels of co-morbid chronic disease, and escalating complexity of care delivery and costs," said Sebelius, who signed the memorandum of understanding with Hunt at the annual meeting of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
"By working together, we can more effectively take on these challenges, improve the health IT economy, and the health of the American and British populations," she added.
Officials say the collaboration between the U.S. and U.K. will focus on four key areas:
- Sharing quality indicators. The collaboration reviewed existing quality indicators and selected depression symptom screening and knee/hip quality indicators, and is now identifying alignments across existing British and American repositories to identify best practices in the design and use of quality indicators. Future work will include mutually leveraging technical experts and data, and working on a standardized approach to quality indicator development.
- Making better use of health data. HHS and the National Health Service will look for areas of collaboration with regard to open data and secure transparency of secondary stored data, with the consent of patients, to enable both countries to better gauge the quality of preventive interventions and health care delivery. They'll also work toward interoperability standards for improvement of data sharing and clinical care.
- Adopting digital systems. The U.S. and the U.K. will work to maximize successful adoption of digital records across the healthcare spectrum and support the development of a robust health IT workforce.
- Working toward a more robust health IT marketplace. The two countries will work to spot barriers to innovation, sharing individual certification approaches for patients and clinician-facing applications, as well as strategies to support small and medium enterprises and start-up companies.
"This is a groundbreaking agreement that will help both of our countries use information and technology more effectively to improve care, safety and give people more control over their health, which is now even more important as we transcend care boundaries," said Hunt, in a statement.
"By bringing knowledge together this will not only offer insight into tackling common problems across health IT, but through innovation, it will help small to medium enterprises play an effective role in our healthcare market," he added.
Click here to read the memorandum in full.
[See also: Lessons from the UK]
