WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Robert Horne, Senior Vice President of Health IT Now (HITN), issued the following statement:

“HITN applauds the work of the Senate HELP Committee in seeking to advance the MEDTECH Act. As a large multi-stakeholder organization that represents the interests of providers, patients, and developers, we recognize that the greatest threat to patient safety and biggest barrier to modernizing our health care system through the use of health IT is the status quo. We therefore urge Committee members to support the MEDTECH Act and look forward to working with the sponsors to advance this issue in the current Congress.”

HITN members athenahealth and McKesson also weighed in on the issue. Dan Haley, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of athenahealth, stated “MEDTECH is a rarity in an election year: a bipartisan, multi-stakeholder solution to a widely recognized problem in healthcare. The regulatory status quo, which requires FDA to regulate low-risk information technology with a framework designed for high risk medical devices, does not serve patients, care providers, or even resource-strapped regulators. athenahealth has long supported a risk-based approach to health information technologies, which will finally unleash the kind of innovation that is common across the rest of the information economy but still rare in healthcare. We commend the bipartisan coalition of HELP Committee members who have produced this excellent piece of legislation.”

McKesson also stated “McKesson strongly supports the MEDTECH Act, which establishes an appropriate risk-based framework for the regulation of health IT, protects patient safety, provides regulatory certainty, and promotes innovation. We applaud Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, together with Senators Hatch and Bennet for crafting a bipartisan agreement on this important issue.”