On Wednesday, President Obama promised to do "everything in my power" to get a healthcare bill passed -- and he has been pressing congressional leaders to move forward. In spite of hosting a bipartisan healthcare summit last week, the President seems willing to proceed with little or no GOP support. Still, it may still be a few weeks before we see action -- or the end of the initiative for now. If you want to participate in the debate, there is still time to write your elected officials. (VFI also has some tips for effective communications with lawmakers.)

Even while the public policy process grinds along, innovations and initiatives in health IT are moving steadily forward. The big Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference wrapped up yesterday in Atlanta. In a keynote, National Coordinator for Health IT David Blumenthal said he expects to see broad use of electronic health records (EHRs) in the coming years. Certification rules for health IT are now being developed. (A synopsis of the announcement can be found here, and the actual 184-page Notice for Proposed Rulemaking can be found here.) ChannelWeb offered a good round-up of large vendor announcements at HIMSS, including offerings from Verizon, Avaya, Microsoft, and others. Microsoft announced the availability of HealthVault Community Connect. This new technology is already incorporated into My Family Health Portrait, an online tool from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). You can read more about this technology and its value for health providers, patients, government agencies, and IT partners in this post on FutureFed, the Microsoft Federal Blog.

Remember, you can follow VFI on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vfiorg. I've eased back on my tweets, but I'm at http://twitter.com/techdel.