About FHA

The Federal Health Architecture is an E-Government Line of Business initiative. It is a response to the President's Management Agenda, which calls for increased efficiency and effectiveness in all government operations.

FHA and its federal partners are helping build a federal health information technology environment that is interoperable with private sector systems and supports the President’s plan to enable better point-of-service care, increased efficiency and improved overall health in the U.S. population.

FHA is responsible for:

• Leveraging federal expertise by creating a federal health information sharing environment
• Supporting federal efforts to develop and adopt health IT standards and services
• Ensuring that federal agencies can seamlessly exchange health data among themselves, with state, local and tribal governments, and with private-sector healthcare organizations

FHA is managed from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT at the Department of Health and Human Services and is driven by the President's health IT plan, which calls for the widespread use of interoperable electronic health records by 2014.

FHA contributes to the President's plan through:

• Input: FHA provides a coordinated federal voice and collaboration on national health IT solutions
• Implementation: FHA gives guidance to federal agencies on standards-compliant health IT investments that support of data interoperability
• Accountability: FHA ensures accountability for health IT programs in the federal government in the effort to advance interoperability