HIMSS Releases "Health IT Value Suite"

On July 16, HIMSS announced the release of their Health IT Value Suite. It is a very useful and comprehensive knowledge repository that "classifies, quantifies and articulates the clinical, financial and business impact of health IT investments."

The HIMSS Health IT Value Suite offers relevant and credible examples that help providers, policymakers and payers evaluate the success of their IT investments and implementations with an emphasis on examining clinical, business and financial factors. It will also be useful to vendors of both proprietary and 'open source' health IT solutions.

The Health IT Value Suite creates a framework that helps demonstrate at least 56 different documented benefits of health IT across the five categories of Satisfaction, Treatment, Electronic data/information, Prevention and patient education and Savings - The Value STEPS™.

The Health IT Value Suite helps answer many of the questions that have been raised over the past decade about the real-world benefits and impact of implementing electronic health record (EHR) and related health IT solutions.

When coupled with the 'open data' posted on the Health IT Dashboard - that contain detailed facts, figures, graphs, maps, and data tables about the implementation of EHR systems across the U.S. – the HIMSS Health IT Value Suite may help counter some of the many long-time critics of the value of EHR systems.

To download a copy of the Executive Summary and associated Infographics of the HIMSS Health IT Value Suite, go to http://www.himss.org/ValueSuite