# Gratitude
The special thing about passion projects is that leaps in progress can be made in short periods of time.
From the beginning, the Blue Button+ effort has been driven by the generosity and selflessness of all the participating companies and organizations. Groups large and small lent their most valuable employees to participate in our weekly working sessions. Many of the individuals involved invested their nights and weekends to create a blueprint for the secure and automated transmission of health records.
The impact of the work will be felt over the next 6 months. Patients across the country will start to get digital access to their health records. They will then be able to take those records and use them in new products and services that help them manage and improve their health.
There’s so much potential. The work is not over, but I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all those that are making it possible. From the 68 companies and organizations to my colleagues at the VA, WH, and ONC.
To learn more go to http://bluebuttonplus.org
February 14, 2013 - Marine One
January 21st, 2013 - Inauguration
January 1st, 2013 - Year in Review
December 27th, 2012 - Craftsman & Wolves
# Can Designers Shape the Future of Healthcare?
Today, when you print a medical record, it looks like a cash register receipt. The information is all there, but it is not especially patient-friendly. And if you have a complex health condition, the record can quickly become unwieldy. It’s better than carrying around paper records, for sure, but as patients and consumers, we really need a better user experience—all in an effort to help patients and their family members better manage their health care.
Graphic designers have the unique ability to take something that exists, transform it, and make it more valuable and usable. By making a patient health record more usable, designers can help to prevent medical errors, empower patients to make smart health decisions, and even save lives.
The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) are inviting graphic designers to rethink how a medical record is presented visually, making it more readable, downloadable, and easy for patients to use. So we are launching a collaborative effort to encourage designers across the country to improve the state of health care.
Graphic Design Contest on Re-imagined Health Record
Over the next six weeks, we are asking talented professionals to submit their take on a re-imagined health record. Then a panel of curators will select the best designs to exhibit in a showcase in Washington D.C. and online to inspire members of the health care industry.
The curators will pick a final design (that may combine elements of numerous designs) to be built and open-sourced on the code sharing site Github . Our objective is to build the Bootstrap for the patient health record.
With these tools, electronic health record software companies across the country should be able to:
- Integrate the final design into their products,
- Contribute to the open-source project and ultimately,
- Help to provide patients with one of the most important tools available in their own health care arsenal.
The VA enthusiastically supports the open-source development of the selected design because it may enable them to improve MyHealtheVet—their patient portal. If the final design is used by the VA, it could touch the lives of millions of veterans and their families.
The health care and design community have come together to support this graphic design contest. We are proud and thankful to have the Designer Fund, California HealthCare Foundation, Luxr, and Rock Health as partners.
For More Information
Visit http://healthdesignchallenge.com for all the details . The call for submission ends on November 30, 2012. For updates, follow @ProjectBlueBtn.
(Written for Health IT Buzz Blog)
October 10th, 2012 - Watching US CTO @Todd_Park integrate CDC dataset into iTriage. #coderforlife
September 19th, 2012
August 23, 2012 - Launch of the Presidential Innovation Fellows Program
