ONCHIT Disbursing $60 million For Research

ONCHIT will make available $60 million to support the development of Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) — defined as those project focused on, “critical areas where breakthrough advances are needed to address existing barriers to the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology (health IT).”

The SHARP program works to address barriers to adoption in the following areas:

• Security of Health Information Technology — research to address the challenges of developing security and risk mitigation policies and the technologies necessary to “build and preserve the public trust as health IT systems become ubiquitous.”
• Patient-Centered Cognitive Support — research to address the need to harness the power of health IT in a patient-focused manner and align the technology with the day-to-day practice of medicine. 
• Healthcare Application and Network Platform Architectures — research to focus on the development of new architectures to achieve electronic exchange and use of health information in a secure manner.
• Secondary Use of Electronic Health Record Data — research to identify strategies to enhance the use of health IT in improving the overall quality of healthcare, population health and clinical research while protecting patient privacy.

Each agreement will last four years. Applications are due Jan. 25, with awards anticipated in March. Information about the SHARP program and the cooperative agreement applications can be found at http://HealthIT.HHS.gov/sharp and at www.grants.gov.