As many of you know, ONC is emerging as the player agency in things health IT.  ONC (and sometimes you see ONCHIT) stands for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.  ONC is the principal Federal entity charged with coordination of nationwide efforts to implement and use the most advanced health information technology and the electronic exchange of health information.

The July issue of Management Science contains a study that "quantifies the effect of state privacy regulation on the diffusion of electronic medical records." The study, by Amalia Miller, Department of Economics, University of Virginia and Catherine Tucker, MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that "state privacy regulation restricting hospital release of health information reduces aggregate EMR adoption by hospitals by more than 24%."  To see the abstract, click