Panel seeks government, private sector to team for IT adoption.(Information technology)

The federal government should use incentives--not unfunded mandates--to accelerate the adoption of health information technology, according to a panel of corporate executives.

And the government should coordinate the use of interoperable health information technology (IT) systems among its own agencies, the panel said.

The Health Information Technology Leadership Panel is made up of executives from companies that purchase a substantial amount of health care for their employees but have little direct involvement in the health care or IT sectors.

The corporate panel was convened by the Department of Health and Human Services late last year to gather ideas about how IT has been successfully adopted in other sectors and how that could be applied to the health care arena.

"The leadership panel asked the federal government to approach health care in a new way--as a catalyst for change and as a collaborator," David J. Brailer, M.D., national coordinator for health information technology said in a statement.

The government should be looking for ways to help finance physician adoption of health IT and to allow providers to reap the benefits of the systems, the panel said.

The panel also recommended that the government be involved in promoting the development and adoption of health IT standards, as well as funding demonstrations and evaluations to learn implementation lessons and to disseminate best practices.