About: Introduction

The eHealth Initiative Blueprint: Building Consensus for Common Action represents multi-stakeholder consensus on a shared vision and a set of principles, strategies and actions for improving health and healthcare through information and information technology (IT).  Through a collaborative process led by eHI’s multi-stakeholder leadership, development of the Blueprint involved nearly 200 organizations representing the many diverse stakeholders in healthcare, including clinicians, consumers, employers and healthcare purchasers, healthcare IT suppliers, health plans, hospitals and other providers, laboratories, the life sciences industry, pharmacies, public health agencies, and state and regional leaders.

In addition to the format contained in this site, the complete eHI Blueprint Report is available as a FREE PDF Download here.

The eHI Blueprint contains several areas for which there is broad consensus among multiple stakeholders regarding the principles, strategies and actions needed to not only engage consumers, transform care delivery and improve population health using health IT, but also to effectively manage privacy and confidentiality, and finance this important work.

Equally as important, the eHI Blueprint identifies areas for which there is not yet broad consensus, where further dialogue and deliberation are needed in order to continue to move this agenda forward. These areas fall into two key categories: those related to the design of financial incentives to support improvements in health and healthcare through health IT, and those related to policies for information sharing.

The Blueprint builds upon and recognizes the work of many projects and initiatives both in the federal government and in the private sector, and references this work within the "overview of key initiatives" and "resources" sections of the Blueprint. It also extends this work by building broader consensus on a path forward among the many stakeholders in healthcare.