WHITE 2010
The First Annual Workshop on Health IT and Economics
October 8-9, 2010, Washington, DC
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/chids/white
Chair: Ritu Agarwal
Program co-chairs: Guodong (Gordon) Gao and Jeffrey S. McCullough

Health information technology (IT) holds the potential to improve the quality and reduce the cost of healthcare delivery. However, this potential has yet to be realized. Significant challenges remain regarding design, implementation, utilization, and evaluation of health IT, and there is a compelling need for research that can inform both policymakers and practitioners.

The Workshop on Health IT and Economics (WHITE) will expand the frontiers of health IT research. This workshop will provide a forum for leading researchers to disseminate their work and network within a growing and vibrant community. WHITE will foster collaborations between academia, government, and industry. The workshop will also offer policymakers and practitioners the opportunity to shape the evolving health IT research agenda. Likewise, researchers will gain insights into emerging issues of practice and policy.

Ultimately, a full understanding of health IT and its implications can only be gained through an interdisciplinary approach that crosses traditional academic silos. Insight into the unique challenges and opportunities that health IT poses requires collaboration across diverse fields of research including business, economics, health services, health informatics, and computer science. A key objective of WHITE is to build and nurture such as interdisciplinary research community.

We solicit papers on a wide range of topics, including: understanding technology adoption barriers; managing the assimilation of health IT into workflows and organizations; quantifying the benefits of health IT investments; designing measures and incentives for meaningful use; defining health data standards; developing business models for health information exchanges; and measuring how patients utilize online clinical information.

The first annual WHITE meeting will be held in Washington DC in October 8-9, 2010. The workshop will be hosted by the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. CHIDS (www.rhsmith.umd.edu/chids) was established in 2005, and is the first academic research center focused on health information and decision systems in a leading business school.

Please submit an extended abstract of no more than 5 pages to whitepaper@rhsmith.umd.edu by Aug 10, 2010. The abstract can be based on work-in-progress or work published within the past year. Abstracts will be reviewed for novelty, rigor, and policy impact. Authors will be notified of decisions within three weeks.

Please check http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/chids/white for further information and updates.



Ritu Agarwal
Professor and Dean's Chair of Information Systems
Director, Center for Health Information and Decision Systems
Robert H. Smith School of Business
4327 Van Munching Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1815
301.405.3121 TEL
301.405.8655 FAX
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/faculty/ragarwal