The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality awarded almost $40 million in contracts to help equip and stand up the Health IT Research Center, a national organization designed to support the recently funded health IT regional extension centers.
Among the eight contracts, technology and management consultant Booz Allen Hamilton, and Function 1, a portal services firm, will develop a public Web site and private collaborative portal so extension center staff and physicians can interact with the research center electronically.
The Health IT Research Center, which AHRQ is developing for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, will offer the regional extension centers best practices in adopting health IT and will point out new methods and resources to spur providers toward meaningful use in a continuous learning environment.
AHRQ announced the contract awards April 1 on the Federal Business Opportunities Web site at http://www.fbo.gov.
Another three research and consulting vendors "Abt Associates, Westat, and RTI International-- will provide educational tools and resources to the center. Westat will also establish the center's knowledge-sharing network, while RTI will develop a model for transforming providers' practices in various primary care settings to adapt to the changes that meaningful use of computerized medical records will require.
ONC has awarded $643 million in grants to 60 organizations to establish the extension centers across the nation to offer local technical assistance to physicians and small practices to deploy electronic health records.
