Kelly Cronin, director of the newly created Office of Programs and Coordination within the ONC, unveiled the new priorities, which will span the next one to three years, Sunday at the annual Health Information and Management Systems Society conference in San Diego. While the ONC traditionally has worked to seed the market by encouraging physicians and hospitals to automate their patient records, the office now will begin targeting patients themselves. The ONC envisions the projects generating consumer demand that will help boost the use of EHRs among physicians, Cronin said.

"We still have issues with the adoption gap, [and] we really need to be pushing forward quickly," Cronin said. "This is really a year that we can demonstrate how the consumer can benefit from this agenda. It's an important aspect that we have been focusing on recently and trying to determine our priorities."

The projects will be focused in four areas: biosurveillance, EHRs, chronic care management and consumer empowerment. The ONC will establish a working group in each area that will provide recommendations for the private sector, she added.

The biosurveillance project will include the launch of a nationwide public health monitoring network to be used during a pandemic or bioterrorist attack to send lab results electronically from emergency departments to public health agencies within 24 hours, Cronin said.

The ONC also will shepherd the development, within a year, of standardized, widely available software tools for physicians and patients to access historical and current lab results online.