Supporting HITECH implementation and assessing lessons for the future: The role of program evaluation

In addition to supporting the adoption and use of health IT, HITECH also included funds to support independent national program evaluation activities. The main challenges of evaluating health IT programs of the breadth and scale of the HITECH programs are the importance of context in the implementation and impact of the programs, the complexity and heterogeneity of the interventions, and the unpredictable nature of the innovative practices spurred by HITECH. The lessons learned include the importance of tailoring evaluation activities to each phase of implementation, flexible mixed methods, and continuous formative evaluation.