ONC announced two awards under the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health Information Technology (LEAP in Health IT) funding opportunity.

This past decade, we have witnessed steady improvements to healthcare interoperability. For those paying close attention, the CONNECT open source project has played a role in making those improvements possible. Now the time has come for the community at large to determine the future of CONNECT.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced that The Sequoia Project has been awarded a cooperative agreement to serve as the Recognized Coordinating Entity (RCE).

We recently checked in with  ClinicalBox  and Lowell General Hospital about their progress since being selected as one of six winners of ONC’s 2015 Market Research and Development (R&D) Pilot Challenge in 2015.* This challenge broke down the barriers between promising start ups and healthcare stakeholders by helping early stage health information technology (health IT) companies connect with healthcare organizations that were willing to host pilot programs.

For patients, healthcare providers, and health plans (among other stakeholders) who need trustworthy, actionable information, the advantages of validated “healthcare directories” are wide ranging and will play an increasing part in our nation’s interoperability infrastructure.