ONC Readies HIT Public Education

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is gearing up for a national campaign to educate the public about the privacy and security of electronically exchanged protected health information.

The campaign is mandated under the HITECH Act. But first, "ONC requires formative and process information about different segments of the public to conduct the campaign effectively," the office notes in a notice being published Nov. 1 in the Federal Register.

Consequently, ONC intends to survey more than 40,000 consumers and health professionals through a combination of focus groups, surveys and interviews before and during the two-year educational campaign. Most of the information collection will only take 10 to 15 minutes, but the total estimated time nears 8,800 hours.

ONC also is proposing a change to already-approved data collection processes to further explore consumer attitudes and preferences on communicating protected health information using mobile devices.