This spring, David Brailer, MD, PhD, National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (HIT) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, visited the school to discuss national HIT initiatives. The presentation followed a morning of HIT “rounds” at the Hopkins schools of Nursing, Medicine, and Public Health, and the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
Brailer’s visit was organized by assistant professor Patricia Abbott, PhD, RN, BC, FAAN, a national leader in nursing informatics, who began the rounds with a demonstration of the school’s Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager Lab. (For more on HIT initiatives at the school, see last issue’s cover story, “Hard-Wired to Heal” (www.son.jhmi.edu/JHNmagazine/archive/spring2006/)
Brailer, who was appointed in 2004 as the first National Health Information Technology Coordinator and who served until this past spring, was charged with deploying health information technology to help realize substantial improvement in health safety and efficiency. He is recognized as a leader in the strategy and financing of quality and efficiency in health care, with a particular emphasis on health information technology and health systems management.