HHS Issues Three FOAs

Secretary of HHS Sylvia Burwell at the 2015 ONC Annual Meeting on February 3rd, announced a new ONC Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) that seeks the secure exchange and use of electronic health information. HHS will invest $28 million in funds to achieve 21st century interoperability goals.

The FOA, titled “Advance Interoperable Health Information Technology Services to Support Health Information Exchange” (IX-IX-15-001) is using the lessons learned from the original State HIE Program to help others develop ways to accelerate the widespread adoption and the use of the HIE infrastructure.

Grantees will use interstate and intrastate partnerships to enable care providers to send, receive, find, and use a common clinical data set across unaffiliated organizations to improve care coordination and promote a learning environment.

ONC is strongly encouraging applicants to provide standards-based exchange tools and services that will provide easy and secure access to download and transport health information. ONC is interested in understanding consumer outreach and engagement strategies, along with consumer mediated exchange technology capabilities.

The closing date for applications is April 6, 2015, and states, territories or their non-profit SDEs are eligible to apply. The total funding of $28 million will be divided up into ten or twelve awards with the start date of June 12, 2015

In addition, Karen DeSalvo M.D, MPH, MSc HHS Acting Secretary for Health and National Coordinator for Health IT announced two more FOAs.  One FOA would help strengthen the health IT workforce, with $6.4 million to educate and cross train individuals pursuing careers in health IT.

The third FOA with $1.7 million in funds would build on the work done by the 17 Beacon Communities to establish a Community Health Peer (CHP) Learning Program to bring communities together to share community learning and problem-solving. Participants will be able to identify data solutions, accelerate local progress, disseminate best practices, and help to develop a national strategy around population health challenges.

For more information, go to February 3, 2015 grant announcements at www.grants.gov.