A project to create a health information network throughout Maine is getting two things that should help it become a reality within the next few years.

HealthInfoNet has been awarded a $1 million challenge grant from Maine Health Access Foundation and has hired its first executive director, project officials announced Monday.

Devore S. Culver, former chief information officer at Eastern Maine Healthcare, is expected to assume his role as executive director on June 5. Culver indicated in a prepared statement that HealthInfoNet should help improve the quality and efficiency of Maine’s health care system in part by reducing medical errors and controlling costs. The network is intended to be a secure electronic database that health care providers and treatment centers can use to gain access to health records of consenting patients.

Maine Health Access Foundation, based in Augusta, will match up to $1 million in contributions that HealthInfoNet can raise between May 2006 and December 2007. Small-scale pilot projects with the network are expected to get under way in the next 18 months with statewide implementation expected by 2010.

Statewide network startup costs are projected at between $17 million and $29 million. The network is expected to cost $1 million a year to operate.

States have taken the lead establishing their own patient information networks, which may eventually be linked nationwide, because the federal government has offered little funding for a national system, health officials have said. Maine’s HealthInfoNet is managed by Maine Health Information Center in Manchester.