The full value of investments in electronic medical records, electronic health records and other health IT won't be realized until the data gathered by those systems finds secondary use, according to a report that was released earlier this month by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

PricewaterhouseCoopers highlighted five case studies, which showed how payers, healthcare associations and health systems are using their aggregated electronic data for healthcare research, quality improvement and post-market drug surveillance, among other uses. Those mature efforts are ongoing. Other efforts need to commence to create a critical mass of secondary use of electronic health data and continue to build the case for EHR and EMR adoption.

Earlier this week, Kaiser Permanente announced it has received 22 grants totaling more than $54 million from the National Institutes of Health, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for health research projects. Kaiser will be leveraging its EHR system for most of the studies.

In one initiative, researchers will genotype 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members who are participants in the Research Program on Genes, Environment and Health (RPGEH), the largest U.S.-based population-based bio-bank. The resulting efforts will enable researchers to analyze genetic and environmental impact on multiple health conditions, and deliver personalized medicine for patients.

Kaiser will be leveraging its EHR system for many other initiatives. Kaiser has already used its EHR data to flag risk factors for chronic disease management. Partners HealthCare and Geisinger Health System are two other healthcare organizations that are deriving significant clinical value from secondary use of data.

There's still money to be had - a total of $5 billion - from this particular pot that will be awarded for similar studies. This is a modest start. We'll need more grants awarded and more health systems and other stakeholders to take their health IT systems to the next level to truly drive quality improvement and bring healthcare costs down.