Our May 2004 meeting focused on current activities surrounding the development of a National Healthcare Information Infrastructure (NHII). Our speaker was Helga Rippen, MD, PhD, MPH. Dr. Rippen is Deputy Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of DHHS for Planning and Evaluation. She is working on the development and adoption of NHII. Her talk focused on activities nationally around NHII, the current effort to develop a pilot for the program in the Washington DC area, and on other information systems related priorities and developments at DHHS. These priorities and developments include quality measurement activities. Dr. Rippen also discussed the President's recently announced initiative to have electronic medical records available for all Americans within the next 10 years and to create a sub-cabinet level position of "national health information technology coordinator."