Our Mission

The mission of the Community Health Information Technology Alliance (CHITA) is to advance the adoption of information technology in healthcare for the purpose of improving efficiency and quality of care.

CHITA’s Circle of Life

CHITA was founded in 1996 by payers and providers in Washington State to address the issue of e-commerce in healthcare, with a focus on interoperability and data security. Its management team built the organization’s structure and formalized its operating principles in early 1997, and the alliance’s first Work Groups addressed eligibility and referral transactions.

In its first national collaboration, CHITA worked with the Minnesota Health Data Institute and the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium to hold a national summit funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in February of 1998. The topic was developing a model for secure transactions over the internet.

This conference led to a five-state RWJF-funded demonstration project involving MHDI, MHDC, North Carolina Healthcare Information & Communications Alliance and the Utah Health Information Network. CHITA’s role in the $2.3 million grant involved demonstrating secure transmission of clinical data from the labs to the state department of health to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The project demonstrated that the time required for receipt of infectious disease outbreak data to the CDC could be reduced from and average of three weeks to two days. During this time CHITA ceased operating as a membership-focused organization.

By 1999, CHITA had begun focusing most of its efforts on issues related to privacy and security of health data transmission using Internet technologies. CHITA became the regional SNIP affiliate for WEDI and began staffing quarterly HIPAA Readiness Forums in February 2000 to help the community prepare for new federal regulations and their approaching deadlines regarding these issues. In addition to IT initiatives, CHITA developed a standard referral form for providers and payors that is still in use today. It also formed the Pacific West HIPAA Congress, which produced free sample HIPAA privacy forms for Washington and surrounding states.

In mid-2002 CHITA began rebuilding its Board and operating as a membership-focused organization again. Organizations represented on the Board included a diverse range of supporters: