Feds Postpone Bid To Govern Health IT Network

Bowing to widespread industry objections to its proposals for governing the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) has tabled the project, at least for now.

In comments at a recent meeting of the Health IT Policy Committee and in a blog post, National Health IT Coordinator Farzad Mostashari made it clear that his office was responding to the intense industry pushback it has received since issuing an official request for information in May.

"We heard that there are a lot of promising health information exchange activities currently underway and emerging, perhaps more than is widely appreciated," he wrote on ONC's HealthITBuzz blog. "There are also existing and emerging consortia and voluntary governance bodies, both for directed as well as query-based exchange. One concern we heard repeatedly was that the very act of beginning a regulatory process may actually slow the development of trusted exchange at a time when we cannot afford that."