PROVIDENCE – Laura Adams, president and CEO of the Rhode Island Quality Institute, has been named to the board of directors of the new AHIC Successor Inc., a public-private enterprise focused on helping build a secure, interoperable national health information system.

The new organization is being established in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to succeed the American Health Information Community (AHIC), a federal advisory committee that will soon be dissolving.

AHIC aims to bring together the best of the public, private and nonprofit sectors to develop a unified approach to a national health care IT system. Its board members were chosen based on their board experience, thought leadership, strategic experience and ability to work by structured consensus.

Adams – who has lead the Quality Institute since 2002, and previously had worked as a nurse and hospital administrator (READ MORE) – is a nationally recognized leader in bringing information technology (IT) and quality improvement to the health care system. A faculty member of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, she has been involved in several national projects.

The Quality Institute itself has been a leader in bringing health care IT to Rhode Island, with ongoing initiatives that promote the adoption and full use of health information technology and a health information exchange throughout Rhode Island. It also has led the state’s electronic-prescriptions effort, as a national beta-test site for the SureScripts e-prescribing system. (READ MORE)

“AHIC Successor will be a national catalyst and an ‘enabler’ to achieve the benefits of health information technology,” Adams said in a statement this week. “This is both a great honor and a great responsibility, to serve on the board of an organization that intends to be a strong force in advancing health care quality, safety and value through information technology.”

The current American Health Information Community, scheduled to complete its work by the end of 2008, has advised HHS on how to accelerate the development and adoption of health information technology.

AHIC Successor Inc. is a public-private enterprised established via a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) to support U.S. efforts to developing an interoperable health information system. It will replace the American Health Information Community (AHIC), a similar advisory panel that is slated to dissolve at the end of 2008. For more information, visit www.AHICSuccessor.org.

For more information about the Rhode Island Quality Institute – a statewide collaboration of representatives from hospitals, physicians, nurses, health insurers, consumers, business, government and academia – go to www.riqi.org.