The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has released version 1.0 of its road map for achieving the interoperability of health IT.
The road map lays out the milestones, calls to action, and commitments that public and private stakeholders should focus on achieving, particularly in the near term, according to a blog by Dr. Karen DeSalvo, ONC chair, and Erica Galvez, ONC's interoperability and exchange portfolio manager. ONC had released a draft version of the road map -- called Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap -- in January. More than 250 comments were received and used to shape the final version, according to DeSalvo and Galvez.
The near-term focus of the plan is to ensure that healthcare systems can send, receive, find, and use priority data domains, making electronic health information securely available to improve healthcare quality and outcomes. DeSalvo and Galvez said that this near-term goal -- to be completed by 2017 -- will be met in several ways:
- Improve technical standards and implementation guidance for priority data domains and associated elements
- Rapidly shift and align federal, state, and commercial payment policies from fee-for-service to value-based models to stimulate the demand for interoperability
- Clarify and seek alignment of federal and state privacy and security requirements that enable interoperability
- Coordinate among stakeholders to promote and align consistent policies and business practices that support interoperability and address those that impede interoperability
The goal for 2018-2020 will be to expand data sources and users in the interoperable health IT ecosystem to improve healthcare and lower costs. From 2021-2024, ONC hopes to achieve nationwide interoperability.
The current version of the road map can be found here.
