Ten Rules for Developing a Health Information Exchange

1. Remember that this is the real world. “Don't forget that we're dealing with the real world and real people,” Dr. Garber said. “Everything we do affects real people and their health and their happiness. That also includes the physicians and nurses and staff that work in these organizations; everything we do affects [them] as well.”

No one should expect physicians and staff to fill out forms just for the sake of collecting data so someone can do some analysis on the back end. Data collection should be a byproduct of the care that we give. “Everything we build is affecting real workloads of real people.”

The conference was sponsored by Ingenix, the American Medical Association, and several other industry groups and trade associations. Dr. Garber did not disclose any conflicts of interest related to his presentation.