ONC Issues Funding Announcement

The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) www.healthit.gov posted a Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) on June 30, 2015. The FOA is going to establish ongoing collaboration between ONC and various Standards Development Organizations (SDO). These SDOs support advancements in the technical standards necessary to achieve interoperability among health IT systems.

When a computer system receives electronic health information from another system, it needs to be able to process the information without time consuming human intervention. This can only occur if the sending system has used a consistent data format this is known and expected by the receiving system.

Stakeholders in health IT have organized themselves into SDOs to develop standardized data formats pertaining to specific purposes. This project will work on standards used for e-prescribing, public health reporting, query, research, lab ordering and lab results, standards for transporting clinical health information, and standards used to represent clinical concepts in vocabularies, terminologies, and code sets.

ONC will fund up to five cooperative agreements totaling $100,000 in the first year with up to five awards expected. Additional funds to be provided in future years, subject to availability of funds.

Eligible applicants must be a U.S based non-profit institution or organization, or a state or local government agency. The FOA “Standards Development Organization collaboration to Enhance Standards Alignment, Testing, and Measurement” is due August 30, 2015 with an anticipated award date of September 15, 2015.

Go to www.grants.gov/web/grants/search-grants.html to view the FOA. For more information, email Mera Choi at SDOCollaborationFOA@HHS.gov.