The National Resource Center is a central national source of information and assistance to help our Nation embrace the power and efficiency of health information technology (IT). Across the Nation, the need to harness the power of IT for our health care system is clear. Technologies such as electronic health records, health information exchange, and telemedicine hold the potential to revolutionize everyday clinical care making it better, safer, and more efficient.

In 2004, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) established the National Resource Center for Health Information Technology to advance the goals of the Department of Health and Human Services' Secretary Mike O. Levitt for modernizing health care through the best and most effective use of IT. AHRQ has invested more than $260 million in grants and contracts in 41 States to support and stimulate investment in health IT, especially in rural and underserved areas. Together, these projects form a nationwide learning laboratory of health care systems, hospitals, physician practices, research institutes, nursing homes, and other organizations that are helping to transform clinical practice through health IT.

Led by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago the National Resource Center provides direct technical assistance and consulting services to AHRQ projects involved in developing, testing, and using health IT applications, with a particular focus on addressing challenges to health IT implementation in rural and small community settings. In doing so, the National Resource Center is helping to build the Nation's capacity across health care settings-large and small, urban and frontier-for the effective use of health IT.

In addition, the National Resource Center serves as the link between the health care community at large and the researchers and experts who are on the front lines of health IT. As the central repository for lessons learned from AHRQ's health IT initiative, the National Resource Center will encourage adoption of health IT by disseminating the latest tools, best practices, and research results from this unique real-world laboratory. This knowledge library of new health IT findings and research will grow over time, serving as the hub for dissemination and translation of results from AHRQ-funded projects to the broader health care, public health, and health IT communities, and to the public at large.

 The National Resource Center comprises an extraordinary partnership of organizations with expertise in health IT. NORC's partners include the American Medical Informatics Association;  Burness Communications; the Center for Information Technology Leadership at Partners HealthCare System, Inc.; the Computer Sciences Corporation; the eHealth Initiative; First Consulting Group; Indiana University/Regenstrief Institute; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; and the Vanderbilt Center for Better Health.

By providing direct technical assistance to AHRQ's health IT projects and supporting effective dissemination of lessons learned, the National Resource Center maximizes the benefit of the Agency's investment in health IT for health care providers, payers, patients, and policymakers at all levels.

For more information about the AHRQ National Resource Center, contact healthit@ahrq.gov or call 866-356-3467.