Aneesh Chopra is talking so why wouldn’t I attend?  Need I say any more?  Even before he starts, you can tell he is an energetic speaker.

• Innovations in Health IT would be good for the economy.
• We are coming from “There’s a form for that.” to “There’s an app for that.”  Government reality doesn’t reflect public reality.
• The US is 15th in Higher Education, 22nd in E-Government, and 40th on the Innovation Trends.  This was out of 40 countries.  The US had 2.7% growth.  Obama wants to return to number 1 by 2020. (Reasonable, but challenging) 
• Perceives Healthcare and Energy as the growth areas for the economy.
• Stimulus act called for an increase in health It R&D.
• Broadband is important.  If patients don’t have broadband, how do they access their records remotely.  Same for doctors at home.  (Suspect that doctors have a higher percentage of broadband than patients)
• Trying to bring the R&D side of the house with IT procurement (CIO Vivek Kundra).
• Told story of how in Virginia it took 1.5 years to procure a 150K, 6-week, web application.
• Text4baby is a partnership with the wireless carriers, who are waving fees, to send SMS updates to expecting mothers based upon the due date.
• (Trying to sell how things are changing in Washington. Haven’t seen it yet.)
• Prioritization, transparency, engagement, and rapid results (90-day measurements) are the Core Principles on how they are trying to get Washington to work.
• Releasing next week, guidance to federal agencies on prizes and rewards for innovation.
• Open Government plans will be published April 7th.
• NHIN: A set of policies, standards, and services that enable the Internet to be used for secure and meaningful exchange of health information to improve health and health care”
• NHIN Direct: Open transparent collaborative process to evolve the NHIN.  An Gov20 initiative that was launched today.
• Don’t abandon 5 9s reliability for core systems, but look for the innovation for new ways to serve.

Say what you want about the president, the CTO has a good vision and the enthusiasm to push towards it.  That is a very good thing.

Time for the exhibit hall until close.  Always interesting as the vendors are tired and giving everything away.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.