Smith-CHIDS Hosts Research Summit to Accelerate Health IT Diffusion

College Park, Md. - Oct. 1, 2012 - Leading researchers representing 40 institutions worldwide will present and discuss their work in the third Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE) on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 5-6 at the Key Bridge Marriott in Arlington, Va.

Organized by the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, the conference is designed to foster collaboration between academia, government and industry.

Participants will share ideas on health IT subtopics ranging from adoption barriers and assimilation into workflows and organizations to impacts of investments, measures and incentives for meaningful use and business models for health information exchanges. (Go to the website for a detailed listing of panel topics and research presentations.)

The recent Supreme Court ruling to uphold the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act magnifies the importance of this year's workshop, said WHITE Chair Ritu Agarwal, Dean's Chair of Information Systems and director of CHIDS. "The court's decision has created a path to improving access, reducing costs and enhancing health care quality, and health information technology offers the potential to take advantage of this opportunity," she said. "However, significant challenges remain regarding design, implementation, utilization and evaluation of health IT. A compelling need persists for research that can inform both policymakers and practitioners."

Gordon Gao, assistant professor of decision, operations and information technology and WHITE program co-chair, noted: “We need a forum where policy makers can actively guide the agenda that researchers are pursuing. WHITE is a robust forum for such exchanges.”

Keynote speakers Dennis Wagner and Stephen T. Parente bring high-level policymaking, administrative and research insight related to health IT. Wagner has established himself as an international leader in healthcare quality improvement, the environment and social marketing through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He co-directs the department's Partnership for Patients Initiative and serves as associate director for campaign leadership in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' Innovation Center. Parente, a finance professor in the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, directs the UM Medical Industry Leadership Institute and has been the principal investigator for funded studies on consumer directed health plans since 2002. He also was a health policy adviser for the McCain 2008 presidential campaign and served as legislative fellow in 1992-1993 for the office of West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller IV.