Health IT Stakeholders Announce Virtual Clipboard Initiative

Major stakeholders in the health IT world are joining together to create a consistent blueprint for a virtual clipboard mobile application to remove paper from the intake process. 

The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) announced the partnership and is working on it with the Sullivan Institute for Healthcare Innovation, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), along with representatives from major health plans, providers, health IT vendors, healthcare organizations and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The groups had a meeting this week to begin the process. 

The aim of the initiative will be identifying and promoting effective and actionable electronic approaches to patient information capture, maintenance and dissemination that leverage mobile devices and "smart" technologies and applications. The first part will focus on getting patients to submit pertinent health insurance and demographic information through an app. The second phase will focus on health information. 

"We’ve been talking about the importance of shifting to a paperless healthcare environment for years but the patient intake process is still mired in the ‘70s. Not only does the current process add unnecessary costs in the system, but it can lead to treatment complications due to inaccurate or incomplete health records,” Devin Jopp, Ed.D., president and CEO of WEDI, said in a statement.