The U.S. Health and Human Services Department announced Monday the formation of a national collaboration and four requests for proposals to advance the administration's goals of implementing electronic health records within the next 10 years. The system would ideally create a personal health record that patients, doctors and other healthcare providers could securely access through the Internet no matter where a patient was seeking medical care-and provide a way for hospitals, insurance companies and employers to agree on standards and achieve interoperability. The health records would essentially be a digital collection of a patient's medical history, including diagnosed conditions, prescribed medications, vital signs, immunizations, lab results and personal stats like age and weight, etc. In total, HHS is expected to spend $86.5 million on health IT in FY 2005, and President Bush has requested $125 million for health IT in FY 2006.