Page 88 - Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

Health Literacy, eHealth, and Communication: Putting the Consumer First: Workshop Summary

5

Emerging Tools and Strategies

A guIDE FOR DEVELOPINg AND PuRCHASINg SuCCESSFuL
HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOgy

Cindy Brach, M.P.P.
Senior Health Policy Researcher,
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is a leader
in the field of health information technology (HIT). It has an extensive
1
HIT portfolio and operates the National Resource Center (NRC) for HIT.
Previous speakers have noted that there is not a great deal of awareness
about health literacy issues in the IT world and that we need to raise that
level of awareness. As an evidence-based agency, AHRQ wants to put
forward what is known in the field about better ways of developing HIT
that will lead to more effective ways to communicate effectively with all
audiences.
The NRC was asked to develop a health literacy guide for HIT
developers and purchasers. The project was managed jointly by Prashila

1 NORC (the National Opinion Research Center), “in cooperation with several partners,
has led the development of a national resource center (NRC) for AHRQ’s Health Information
Technology (health IT) initiative. The AHRQ NRC supports over 100 AHRQ HIT grantees,
five State and Regional Demonstration (SRD) projects working toward health information
exchange, as well as 33 states and one territory working on a Health Information Security
and Privacy Collaboration” (National Opinion Research Center, 2008).

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