Spokane and the Inland Northwest clearly are at the forefront of a national movement toward enhanced health-care information technology and stand to benefit as that movement picks up momentum, a federal official said during a recent visit here.

"In many ways, your community already serves as a beacon" to inspire other areas trying to establish health IT networks, the official, Craig Brammer, told me during a brief interview last month while he was in Spokane. "We want to demonstrate that what's going on here is achievable, sustainable, and replicable so other communities can follow suit."

Brammer is deputy director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Beacon Community Cooperative Agreement Program. He and program director Aaron McKethan made an overnight stop here as a follow-up to that agency's award of $15.7 million to Spokane's Inland Northwest Health Services and the collaborative entity it has dubbed Beacon Community of the Inland Northwest, or BCIN.

BCIN was one of just 15 "communities" selected by Health and Human Services in May from more than 130 applicants to receive sizable grants and to serve as pilot areas for the eventual widespread use of health information technology. Geographically, though, it was the largest of the grant recipients, encompassing 14 counties in Eastern Washington and North Idaho.

The agency said the awards, totaling $220 million of federal stimulus money, "will not only help achieve meaningful and measurable improvements in health-care quality, safety, and efficiency in the selected communities, but also help lay the groundwork for an emerging health IT industry that is expected to support tens of thousands of jobs."

Here, the three-year pilot program will enable INHS and partnering organizations and health-care providers to enhance care coordination—including in rural areas—for patients with adult-onset, or type 2, diabetes.

As most people are aware, diabetes has become an epidemic in the U.S. An estimated 23.7 million people in the country have diabetes, diagnosed and undiagnosed, and that number is projected to grow to 44.1 million by 2034. Annual diabetes-related spending was estimated at $113 billion last year, and that's expected to balloon to $336 billion over that same time 25-year time span. Those are the anticipated trends, at least, unless a strong, coordinated effort is made to improve treatment and to keep people from developing the disease in the first place.

Through its Community Health Education and Resource Diabetes Education Center, INHS has been working with diabetes patients for more than 20 years. Beyond that particular expertise, though, it also has become nationally recognized for the expansive network it has established for sharing patients' medical records electronically.

McKethan and Brammer came to Spokane mostly to gain a better understanding of the diabetes project and the IT network, meet some of the stakeholders who will be involved in the project, and review the project work plan.

During a brief break in that busy schedule, Brammer told me, "What's great about this work is that no two communities (among those participating in the pilot program) are alike," and each has its particular IT strengths that others can mimic.

Spokane certainly is competitive within that group, though, he says, adding that, "The implications are that many others now see this community as a leader" in health IT, including in the federal government, which could prove beneficial in the future.

INHS, a sizable employer and economic contributor here in its own right, deserves credit for competing successfully for a grant that will inject more money into the local economy while also hopefully producing healthier lifestyles.