The U.S. Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced that the agency is creating two new offices: an Office of the Chief Medical Officer and an Office of Consumer eHealth.
The primary function of the chief medical officer will be "to infuse a clinical perspective across ONC on all activities which have clinical implications," wrote Dr. Farzad Mostashari, national coordinator for health IT, in a blog posting. These activities will encompass meaningful use policy development; clinical decision support; quality assurance, including metrics and measurement development; safety; and usability.
The Office of Consumer eHealth will continue the work on consumer-related activities already under way, in addition to expanding upon these activities, according to Mostashari.
A national search is being conducted to recruit for the positions. Job descriptions for each position can be accessed by clicking here.
In other news, the ONC announced a challenge to software developers to create platform-agnostic health IT tools to facilitate the reporting of medical errors in hospitals and outpatient settings. The objective is to create an easy-to-use software tool for reporting problems, near misses, and adverse events.
The software must allow hospital quality and risk management staff to add information from follow-up investigations, to submit reports to regulatory agencies, and to track follow-up activities. The software must also be able to integrate with any electronic health record and other health data IT sources, according to Wil Yu, special assistant of innovations and research at the ONC.
The first place contest winner will receive $50,000. Second- and third-place winners will be awarded $15,000 and $5,000, respectively. The deadline for entry submission is August 31, 2012. Click here for details about the challenge.
