The Office of the National Coordinator for HIT www.healthit.gov on January 30, released two documents “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap” (Draft Version 1.0.) and the “2015 Interoperability Standards Advisory”.
The “Shared Interoperability Roadmap” proposes critical actions that the public and private sector need to take to advance the country towards an interoperable health IT ecosystem over the next ten years.
Specifically, the Roadmap focuses on actions that will enable a majority of individuals and providers across the care continuum to send, receive, find, and use a common set of electronic clinical information at the nationwide level by the end of 2017.
The draft report lists four critical actions to:
- Establish a coordinated governance framework and process for nationwide health information interoperability
- Improve technical standards and implementation guidance for sharing and using a common clinical data set
- Advance incentives for sharing health information according to common technical standards, starting with a common clinical data set
- Clarify privacy and security requirements to enable interoperability
ONC is accepting public comments on the “Shared Interoperability Roadmap” due by April 3, 2015. Go to www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/interoperability for the draft Roadmap.
The “2015 Interoperability Standards Advisory” document http://healthit.gov/standards-advisory is the model that ONC will use to coordinate, identify, and assess the best available interoperability standards and specifications for industry to use.
This document focuses on clinical health IT interoperability, however, future Advisories may be expanded as necessary and appropriate to support the Interoperability Roadmap’s new developments and as time goes on work with other changing national priorities.