Santa Barbara County Health Data Project Proves Instructive

Health information technology experts and leaders of the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange gathered this week to rehash the project, which was terminated eight years after it was launched, Government Health IT reports.

The project was intended to serve as a model for regional health information organizations, helping health care providers to share access to patients' health information.

Health IT experts joined backers of the project in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to discuss it, concluding that the effort was hampered by:

Technical challenges;
Legal concerns about privacy and liability;
An absence of technical standards; and
Failure to expeditiously demonstrate the project's value to the community.

For example, David Brailer -- founder of CareScience, lead vendor for the project, and the former national coordinator for health IT -- said the project did not win sufficient backing from stakeholders and did not take the most effective approach to building support for the effort.

Sam Karp, vice president of programs for the California HealthCare Foundation, said that flawed design and execution of the data exchange resulted in a "morale hazard" among targeted users, adding that delays also hurt the project.

CHCF provided a $10 million grant to the data exchange (Pulley, Government Health IT, 8/2).

A series of Health Affairs papers published online this week addressed the project.

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