The governments of the U.S. and the U.K. have signed an agreement designed to improve the use and sharing of healthcare information technology and tools.
The agreement represents a formal commitment between the countries to collaborate to advance the applications of data and technology to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery. The deal was signed by U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The agreement is the outcome of a bilateral summit held in June 2013, in which the two countries agreed to collaborate in four key areas:
- The sharing of quality indicators and the identification of best practices between different British and U.S. quality indicators
- The "liberation" of data by finding areas of collaboration around open data and safe and secure data transparency of secondary stored data
- Adoption of digital health record systems
- The priming of the health IT market by identifying barriers to innovation and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises and start-ups
The full text of the memorandum is available here.
