How did Accenture get involved with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contract?
Garret Wu: In April 2004, there was a presidential directive from the Office of Health Information Technology to demonstrate and build the capability to have electronic health records (EHR) for all citizens by 2014. An EHR comprises an individual’s medical information including conditions, medication information, test results and treatment plans. The purpose of the prototypes to show that there could be a variety of solutions and architectures that support interoperability. What was compelling about Accenture’s prototype was that we picked three regions in Appalachia — West Virginia Medical Institute, Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Eastern Region Health Community and CareSpark in Northeastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia. Appalachia is an area typically underserved but representative of the U.S. because it doesn’t have health information exchanges that are operational. We wanted to be able to demonstrate that we could build out and connect in areas in which that didn’t exist yet. C
