The Federal Health Architecture, an E-Government initiative managed by the Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, has set up an online resource, projectpophealth.org, which offers an open source tool to enable health care providers and electronic health record (EHR) vendors to create summary quality measures on a patient population.

According to the popHealth website "EHR vendors are free to download, use, and redistribute the popHealth software in their products." Providers can also use the tool to "understand and analyze the health of their patient population through reports of quality measures."

The popHealth project says that it should simplify reporting of summary quality measures and exchange of summary quality data in a provider's existing workflow. The reports created can also assist providers in extracting important information regarding their patient population. The project is also working on how the software may be used in the future to demonstrate "meaningful use" of health information technology.

The popHealth project also says it will be featuring discussions on the software features, feedback, and long-term strategies. The software is designed to operate in an existing infrastructure and has encryption abilities. The software uses the HITSP C32 standard for data input, and Physician Quality Report Initiative registry XML for reporting output. The popHealth project welcomes any contributions to code, bug fixes, or ideas for new features.

The popHealth project can be accessed at: http://projectpophealth.org/index.html

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