I recently joined the Strategic Advisory Board of an interesting organization called the Clinical Groupware Collaborative [CGC]. The CGC is a relatively new and rapidly growing industry organization uniting companies in Health Information Technology around common goals to support healthcare through communication and collaboration. It’s members share a desire to see growth in the acquisition and use of affordable, easy-to-use, and interoperable EHR technology, especially among the very large group of "non-consumers" who have found legacy EMRs cumbersome, expensive, and technically challenging to use.

Several key initiatives underway, monitored and supported by the CGC are Meaningful Use, NHIN Direct and Smartplatforms to name a few. PointClear is helping it’s EHR clients with their roadmap projects to comply with Meaningful Use, particularly as it relates to provider/patient communications and information. We are closely watching the NHIN and Smartplatform pilots.

If you haven’t heard of the CGC you might want to check it out. It’s board of directors and members are industry leaders and innovators in healthcare technology. The Strategic Advisory Board, also made up of the HCIT leaders, has recently been formed to help the CGC navigate a very dynamic and rapidly evolving HIT marketplace, obviously catalyzed as a result of the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 and the Health Reform Bill of 2010.

Stay tuned. I plan on blogging on interesting developments as they occur.

David Karabinos
President and Chief Executive Officer