White House names Blue Button Innovation Fellows

President Barack Obama named three Presidential Innovation Fellows who will be charged with promoting wider use of the Blue Button, a health information technology service implemented in the Veterans Affairs Department to allow patients and their families to more easily download medical and health records.

Those named to tackle the Blue Button project are: Matt McCall, an information systems expert from Baltimore; Ryan Panchadsaram, founder of Pipette, San Francisco; and Dr. Henry Wei, a physician and information systems expert. The three were introduced as part of a broader announcement of 18 new fellows working on a total of five projects.

Their mission in what's called the Blue Button for America project is to develop ways to stimulate demand for the Blue Button beyond the VA and promote implementation of it voluntarily in the private sector. At the same time, the Innovation Fellows should fuel "the emergence of time- and money-saving products and businesses," according to a White House news release.

There have been one million downloads of records from the VA, which is a good start, said Dr. Farzad Mostashari, head of HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, in a webcast announcing the Innovation Fellows. However, he said, the ONC would like to see 10 million downloads in the next year and 100 million downloads in the next two years.

Mostashari said he'd like the Blue Button to be so widely known that people use the term as a verb, with users saying something such as, "I'm going to Blue Button my health record."