The HHS Office of the National Coordinator https://www.healthit.gov on August 12, 2020, issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity to expand and accelerate innovative uses of electronic health information via HIEs to support state and local public health agencies.
With $2.5 million in funding available from the CARES Act, the Office of the National Coordinator for HIT (ONC) will award up to five cooperative agreements under the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via the Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program. ONC plans to award the five awards in amounts of up to $500,000 each.
Awardees in the STAR HIE Program will build upon previous and existing federal investments in HIEs such as improving linkages between public health agencies and the services that HIEs are able to provide.
The objectives for the Program are to:
- Provide innovative HIE services to benefit public health registries
- Improve HIE services to support communities disproportionately impacted by COVID-19
The program needs to leverage the unique abilities and characteristics of HIEs to:
- Serve as hubs for rich data from a multitude of sources
- Utilize HIEs which are often state, local, or regional entities with a strong understanding of and experience with local healthcare environments including policies dictating data use for public health agencies
- Facilitate competition within the healthcare system by acting as trusted third parties who will work with competitive healthcare entities
- Support public health agency activities such as public health reporting and improve data quality
A webinar will be held August 19th at 2PM ET to discuss the funding announcement with the closing date of September 1, 2020
Go to https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/search-grants.html?keywords=93.462 for more information on the funding notice.