Pediatric Informatics: Computer Applications in Child Health (Health ...

472 G.R. Kim and K.B. Johnson
36.4 Federal Agencies Involved in Health Care
and Information Management
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) http://www.nlm.nih.gov
The NLM, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, “is the
world’s largest medical library, with materials in all areas of biomedicine and health
care, as well as works on biomedical aspects of technology, the humanities, and
the physical, life, and social sciences.” It produces PubMed ® , MedlinePlus ® , the
Genetics Home Reference and a number of other medical information databases for
public use. It supports medical informatics research and training on-site at the Lister
Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications and through universitybased
training programs at many institutions throughout the US (http://www.nlm.
nih.gov/ep/GrantTrainInstitute.html) that lead in clinical information technology
development.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/overview
The NCI develops and hosts a number of resources for practitioners and the
public on cancer. In addition to the PDQ online cancer database for adult and pediatric
cancers (http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/pediatrictreatment), NCI is
developing caBIG ® , the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid ® , which is an “information
network enabling all constituencies in the cancer community – researchers,
physicians, and patients – to share data and knowledge.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) http://www.cdc.gov
The CDC is the federal agency involved in developing an informatics and IT
infrastructure relevant to public health issues, including population bio-surveillance
of disease such as cancer and infectious diseases. It also hosts public health
informatics training programs for health professionals.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) http://www.ahrq.gov
AHRQ’s initiative on health information technology (health IT) is “a key
element to the nation’s 10-year strategy to advance the use of information technology
… It includes grants and contracts in to support and stimulate investment in
health IT, especially in rural and underserved areas, to identify challenges to health
IT adoption and use, solutions and best practices for making health IT work and
tools that will help hospitals and clinicians successfully incorporate new IT … As
part of the initiative, AHRQ created the National Resource Center for Health
Information Technology. In addition to providing technical assistance, the Center
shares new knowledge and findings that have the potential to transform everyday
clinical practice.”
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
http://www.hhs.gov/healthit/onc/mission/