Mission

Connecting for Health is a public-private collaborative with representatives from more than 100 organizations across the spectrum of health care stakeholders. Its purpose is to catalyze the widespread changes necessary to realize the full benefits of health information technology (HIT), while protecting patient privacy and the security of personal health information. Connecting for Health is continuing to tackle the key challenges to creating a networked health information environment that enables secure and private information sharing when and where it’s needed to improve health and health care.

Process:

All Connecting for Health collaborative meetings begin with the following statement:

"Our most basic agenda is to improve health and the health care system for patients and consumers through connectivity and information sharing."

Governance:

Connecting for Health is led and operated by the Markle Foundation with additional financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. A Steering Group comprised of more than 70 leaders from all major health stakeholders provides ongoing direction and oversight. The Steering Group was established in 2002, and although new members have been added over the last five years, many of the original members still play an active leadership role.

With each phase of work, however, the collaborative convenes new experts from across the health care spectrum into new working groups. Typically, working groups are constituted to tackle some specific aspect of the policy or technical requirements for private and secure health information exchange. Click here to see current working groups.