The power of technology has transformed every single industry and line of business in our economy. But for Healthcare, technology is yet to be properly implemented to allow patient information to be shared across multiple health facilities and hospitals.

Even as we work today to achieve 100% of healthcare IT adoption across the country many health facilities are still overlooking a crucial piece of the adoption pie. The majority of adoptions are still not taking into consideration the ability to exchange clinical information between physicians and hospitals nation-wide.

Without a comprehensive and collaborative plan to focus on nation-wide clinical systems connectivity build upon a nation-wide interoperability IT infrastructure, individual facilities and health systems will continue to lack access to comprehensive data on patients and the ability to get the best data in the hands of physicians for the best patient care.

Let's spend on projects that last. Lets focus on investing on a nation-wide technology infrastructure that will transform the healthcare industry as we look ahead in the 21^st century. Let eliminate the "data gap•bCrLf between our nation's hospitals, government, research universities and informatics vendors and avoid programs that encourages "silo•bCrLf adoption of specific pieces of clinical systems and facilities.

I support the use of healthcare IT as part of our economic recovery plan, but only if we embrace collaboration and the ability to exchange clinical information between hospitals, universities and physician practices nation-wide by connecting individual clinical systems. Collaboration breaths reduction in errors, new drugs, improvement in quality of care, a wider use of evidence based medical practice and overall reduction in adoption expenditures. Are we lacking the technology innovations to collaborate on healthcare IT?