On April 21, we hosted a very successful and productive health information technology (HIT) meeting that brought together key government, industry, and association players to discuss delivery platforms and user best practices to maximize medication safety and promote enhanced patient care delivery.

While technology continues to advance, it is imperative that health care providers and HIT vendors establish practices that facilitate providers’ workflow and the exchange of information in the new health information exchange environment. Accordingly, the meeting focused on medication use, patient safety, and clinical outcomes related to medication access, efficiency, and affordability, coordination of care, controlled substance safety and access, and adverse drug event reporting.

In addition to our continued work with the Pharmacy HIT Collaborative, the meeting helped position APhA as a leader in the HIT space. From my perspective, one of the most important outcomes of the meeting was the increased awareness and buy-in by nonpharmacists that pharmacists need access to information contained in electronic health records.

The capabilities of pharmacists were also highlighted throughout the day, as was the importance of bidirectional health information exchanges that are congruent with both the practice of medicine and pharmacy.

Meeting attendees included consumers, HIT vendors, and pharmacy benefit managers, as well as representatives from national medical and pharmacy organizations, pharmacy chains, and government agencies such as CMS, FDA, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research, and the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for HIT.

This influential stakeholder group will continue to communicate, and reconvene in 6 months. We will keep you updated as we continue to make progress.

The meeting was cofacilitated by pharmacy consultant Harry Hagel and Ed Fotsch, the Executive Chair of PDR Network. The planning and execution of the meeting was truly a team effort, involving individuals from across the Association. The meeting was supported by Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Merck, Novo Nordisk, Purdue, and Teva.