One undernoticed detail in the health care debate is that part of the Obama vision is going to come to pass no matter what Congress legislates, or doesn't, this fall. About $20 billion to transition the U.S. to computer-based health records systems have already been appropriated. This week, Joe Biden and Kathleen Sebelius started going around the country spending it. The new grants will, reports Bloomberg.com, will go to establishing 70 "Health Information Technology Regional Extension Centers" that will provide health providers with technical help. (Photo credit: juhansonin)

NextGov's Aliya Sternstein has really been doing some tremendous reporting about the nitty-gritty of the DC tech and policy scene. In her latest report, Sternstein tells of a rather airy Senate confirmation hearing for incoming U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra. Chopra, who will head up the White House's portfolio on using technology to drive American innovation in the years ahead got one -- one -- substantive question on what he plans to do once in office. How might telemedicine benefit us?, asked Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar. It will create jobs and lower the cost of health care, answered Chopra.

Good enough!

No questions for Chopra, reports Sternstein, about the more contentious aspects of tech policy implementation. Not a question on topics like the electric grid or patent reform or electronic health records -- the last of which was earmarked in the stimulus package for $20 billion in federal spending. (The Wall Street Journal's Amy Schatz backs up Sternstein's account of the breezy hearing.)

Sternstein: "The ambivalence signals, perhaps, a misunderstanding of the position or, worse, indifference about the role."

When President Obama gets started talking about the potential for technological innovation to meaningfully improve the lives of Americans, you can be reasonably sure that the words "electronic health records" are soon to follow. President Bush talked about digitizing the U.S.'s often archaic medical system by 2014, and Obama has enthusiastically seconded the motion. Meanwhile and on the other coast, Silicon Valley is fairly drooling over the market that health IT potentially opens up. Digitized doctor and hospital records could power long-dreamt-of web 2.0 products like Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault and jumpstart a new wave of R&D and innovation in the U.S. tech sector. And that could go a long way towards earning Obama the distinction of being America's true first "Tech President." (Come to think of it, health IT shares many of the same buzz words as that other area Obama can earn tech cred -- opening government data. Words like standard and timely and non-proprietary.) Putting dollars to rhetoric, just under $20 billion was included in the stimulus plan to finish building out the Nationwide Health Information Network. And now Obama has filled the post of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology within the Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. David Blumenthal, reports Federal Computer Week's Mary Mosquera, "was a senior health adviser for the Obama presidential campaign. He most recently served as a physician and director of the Institute for Health Policy at The Massachusetts General Hospital/Partners HealthCare System in Boston." Blumenthal, a former Ted Kennedy Senate staffer, hasn't minced words on the woeful state of American health IT, calling it in 2006 "pitifully behind where we should be."