Mayo gets grant for health information program

The Mayo Clinic has been awarded a $12.3 million stimulus grant as part of a nationwide Health Information Technology Pilot program.

The clinic will work with the state health organizations in an 11-county region in southeastern Minnesota. The groups will share electronic health record information of children and adolescents suffering from asthma and diabetes.

Nina Schwenk, who chairs the Mayo Clinic IT Committee, said she's confident the pilot program will work in this area.

"We're fortunate in this region to be much more wired than other communities, either in Minnesota or nationally," said Schwenk. "But how do we connect the various silos of technology and electronic medical health records with each other?"

Schwenk says the goal of the three-year pilot is to show how using technology can improve the health and medical outcome of patients.