The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, under Section 3016 of the Public Health Service Act (PHSA), Information Technology Professionals in Health Care, authorizes “assistance to institutions of higher education (or consortia thereof) to establish or expand health informatics education programs,

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including certification, undergraduate, and masters degree programs, for both health care and information technology students to ensure the rapid and effective utilization and development of health information technologies in the United States health care infrastructure.” The program established under Section 3016 will consist of at least two programmatic components, to be described in separate Funding Opportunity Announcements.This funding opportunity, one component of the workforce program, will provide $10 million in grants to institutions of higher education (or consortia thereof) to support health information technology (health IT) curriculum development.

ONC plans to make up to 5 grant awards that will support curriculum development to enhance programs of workforce training primarily at the community college level.

The materials developed under this program will be used by the member colleges of the five regional consortia as well as be available to institutions of higher education across the country.A companion workforce program, Funding Opportunity Announcement EP-HIT-10-001, “Community College Consortia to Educate Information Technology Professionals in Health Care,” describes a new grant program under Section 3016 of the HITECH Act that is designed to prepare trainees with relevant prior experience in six-month intensive courses of instruction at community colleges.

Preparation for the roles targeted by this program requires knowledge of information technology (IT), health care, practice workflow, practice redesign and quality improvement techniques.

The programs will be flexibly implemented to provide each trainee the exact skills and knowledge he or she needs.

For example, someone entering the program with a health background would concentrate on acquiring IT skills and workflow redesign capabilities, rather than content knowledge related to health care.