Excerpt: Included in [The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009] is the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act that focuses on the development of a nationwide health information technology (HIT) infrastructure that supports electronic health records and health information exchanges. To accomplish this, the act includes provisions for: creating standards, implementation specifications and certification criteria for network interoperability, implementing the health network and electronic health records (EHRs) through grants, loan funds, incentive programs, and information sharing, and encouraging the use of the health network by improving information privacy and security.  MORE >>