New policies and standards have not only made it easier for health care providers to access patient records more easily and accurately, but have also helped patients obtain their own information. Informed by research that Pew commissioned, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)—the federal agency that regulates EHRs—in 2021 updated the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability, a set of information that all EHR systems must be able to share with each other. Among the updates made in 2021, ONC included data on social determinants of health, which can help improve care for patients who face socioeconomic challenges. The research also supported ONC’s effort to standardize patient addresses, a critical piece of information in EHRs. Small differences in data—for example, using “Street” in one record and “St.” in another—can make it harder for health care providers to access patients’ medical histories from different facilities. Standardizing addresses can help health care providers match tens of thousands of additional patient records each day. Fortunately, ONC is officially standardizing addresses for EHRs through Project US@, an effort focused exclusively on this issue.

Hot off the presses, the Pediatric Health Information Technology: Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Informational Resource (NAS IR) [PDF – 808 KB] is a new resource from ONC to support pediatric care and practice settings specific to neonatal abstinence syndrome. The NAS IR builds upon prior efforts included in the ONC Pediatric Health Information Technology Informational Resources (IR) for health IT developers and for health care providers, and includes information about the implementation of health IT and its use as part of delivering health care to infants experiencing withdrawal after maternal exposure to opioids and other substances during pregnancy. This is the third pediatric focused IR as part of a broader ONC effort to advance interoperable health IT across the care continuum.

The 2015 Edition Cures Update made several changes to the ONC Health IT Certification Program, including new functionalities and requirements establishing the Conditions and Maintenance of Certification. Most certified health IT developers must update their certified Health IT Modules by December 31, 2022. Certified health IT developers with API technology certified to the § 170.315(g)(8) Application Access- data category request criterion must update their product(s) to the § 170.315(g)(10) Standardized API for patient and population services criterion.

The 2015 Edition Cures Update made several changes to the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program), including new functionalities; new, removed, and revised criteria; and new requirements establishing the Conditions and Maintenance of Certification. This means that most health IT developers of certified health IT (certified health IT developers) will be required to update their certified Health IT Modules by December 31, 2022. As we approach this deadline, it is important to remember that meeting the Certification Program requirements and avoiding non-conformities is up to each certified health IT developer.

The White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), in coordination with the National Security Council, issued a Request for Information (RFI) on October 26, seeking input on optimizing electronic data capture for clinical trials. COVID-19 emphasized the need for a national clinical trials enterprise. In response, the Biden-Harris Administration released the National Biodefense Strategy, which calls for a clinical trial infrastructure “ready to administer candidate countermeasures to participants within 14 days after the identification of a viable countermeasure.” “A key component in building US capacity for clinical research – both during a public health threat and at other times – is ensuring that trial data can be captured as a set of consistent data elements across separate trial sites under a coordinated clinical trial protocol,” OTSP and ONC officials wrote in a HealthITBuzz blog post.