Healthcare doesn’t get much of new IT squared’ funding
A Healthcare InfoTech Staff Report
Information technology specifically for healthcare apparently isn’t an extremely high priority for the Clinton administration, at least in terms of its proposed new "IT squared" program.
Announced last week by Vice President Al Gore, in Anaheim, California, the new funding for government investment in information technology for the year 2000 federal budget will total $366 million. Though much of the funding will go to science, the National Institutes of Health the only agency receiving funding specifically focused on health will get just $6 million, or less than 2%.
The largest recipient is the National Science Foundation, which will receive $149 million, followed by the Department of Defense, with $100 million.
Other agencies slated for allocations, in the order of the amounts they will receive, are the Department of Energy ($70 million), NASA ($38 million) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($6 million).
According to Gore, the money is aimed at bolstering basic research in computer engineering and information technology with a secondary purpose of examining the effects that IT has on the economy.
The IT squared initiative "represents an unprecedented 28% increase in information technology research," Gore told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Anaheim.
"The science that this research could make possible is awesome to contemplate computers that can speak and understand human language, intelligent agents that can search the Internet on our behalf, and high-speed wireless networks that bring telemedicine to our most remote communities."
Gore said government-funded research had helped "split the atom, splice the gene and put people on the moon.’’ Basic government-funded research, he said, "can look at areas private industry cannot afford to explore, but give private companies a platform to build from."
As an example of the explosion in computer power, Gore noted that "a Ford Taurus now has more computing power than the Apollo 11 that took us to the moon.’’
"Just six years ago there were no more than 50 sites on the world wide web,’’ he added. "Of course, now it is an engine driving the stock market, the futures market. In the latest Christmas buying season, we saw the real ignition of e-commerce.’’
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