The original American Health Information Community (AHIC) was a federal advisory committee established in 2005 to advise the government on its role in creating a nationwide electronic health network using health-care IT as the driver.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) last year created a branch-off of AHIC called, temporarily, AHIC Successor, which had its final meeting on Nov. 12, 2008.

Around that time, Dr. Robert M. Kolodner, the national coordinator for health information technology at HHS, told attendees at Everything Channel's Healthcare Summit that coordination was one of the biggest barriers to using technology to make health-care delivery more efficient. That coordination, he said, would start with a decision-making body comprised of national health-care decision makers.

"We don't yet have a place where all the stakeholders can get together in an honest fashion," Kolodner said at the summit.

The National eHealth Collaborative is intended to be that place -- a non-profit, public-private collective. Its list of stakeholders, announced Thursday, includes government agencies, payers, community hospitals, medical centers, patient advocacy group representatives, commercial technology providers and a range of others.

The Collaborative's board of directors includes representatives from everyone from Wal-Mart and Kaiser Permanente to the National Association of Community Health Centers, the Hospital Corporation of America and Eli Lilly & Company, according to a Collaborative news release.

Kolodner is among its three federal liaisons, along with HHS Secretary (and acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Michael Leavitt and U.S. Chief Health Informatics Officer James Peake.

John Tooker, executive vice president and CEO of the American College of Physicians, was elected by AHIC Successor in December to chair the group's 2009 board of directors. He's now officially chairman of the Collaborative's board.

"As the National eHealth Collaborative continues to guide and drive the most important transformation of health care in our nation's history, we are committed to working with all stakeholders to encourage the use of interoperable health-care IT," Tooker said in a statement. "I am pleased to serve alongside some of the most respected leaders in health care and information technology as we work to improve the health and well-being of Americans through the nationwide exchange of interoperable electronic health information."

The formation of the Collaborative comes at a time when technology solution providers, patients, advocacy groups and anyone else with a stake in health-care IT is trying to square the progress of electronic medical records (EMR) with a tough economic climate.

At the end of December, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) released a report suggesting a $25 billion stimulus was needed to help spur EMR adoption in nongovernment hospitals and create jobs in the health-care sector as a whole. It remains to be seen how much of a boost the health-care sector would get from the reported $775 billion economic stimulus plan President-elect Barack Obama and Congress are assembling.

Obama made health care a major priority and frequent talking point in his 2008 presidential campaign. The Congressional Budget Office in December reiterated that health IT plans represent the only option offering reasonable savings for skyrocketing U.S. health-care costs. Health care made up 17 percent of spending in the U.S. GDP in 2007, and is expected to represent 25 percent of GDP by 2025.