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During the first Health Care Technology Policy [HCTPI conference last year, during Health Care Reform,
four major issues were brought up in regards to the underway efforts to develop a Computer Based
Patient Record (CBPR)I the National Information Infrastructure (NIl) as part of the High Performance
Computers & Communications (HPCC), and the so-called "Patient Card" . More specifically it was
explained how a national information system will greatly affect the way health care delivery is provided
to the United States public and reduce its costs. These four issues were:
Constructing a National Information Infrastructure (NIl);
Building a Computer Based Patient Record System;
Bringing the collective resources of our National Laboratories to bear in developing and
implementing the NIl and CBPR, as well as a security system with which to safeguard the
privacy rights of patients and the physician-patient privilege;
Utilizing Government (e.g. DOD, DOE) capabilities (technology and human resources) to
maximize resource utilization, create new jobs and accelerate technology transfer to address health
care issues.
During the second HCTP conference, in mid 1 995, a section of this meeting entitled: "Health Care
Technology Assets of the Federal Government" addressed benefits of the technology transfer which
should occur for maximizing already developed resources. Also a section entitled:"Transfer and
Utilization of Government Technology Assets to the Private Sector", looked at both Health Care and
non-Health Care related technologies since many areas such as Information Technologies (i.e. imaging,
communications, archival I retrieval, systems integration, information display, multimedia,
heterogeneous data bases, etc.) already exist and are part of our National Labs and/or other federal
agencies, i.e. ARPA. These technologies although they are not labeled under "Health Care" programs
they could provide enormous value to address technical needs. An additional issue deals with both the
technical (hardware, software) and human expertise that resides within these labs and their possible
role in creating cost effective solutions.
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