The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement is now available. Today’s milestone marks the beginning of a new era of electronic health information exchange in the US. 

We are pleased to ring in the new year with the release of the 8th annual update of the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition, ONC’s catalog of curated standards and implementation specifications for health information interoperability that reflects extensive feedback from industry and federal agencies.

Earlier today we announced the release of the Project US@ (“Project USA”) Technical Specification Final Version 1.0 and thereby completed our one year goal to coordinate the creation of a health care specification that could be used across the industry for representing patient addresses (mailing, physical, billing, etc.). This new “tech spec” will advance the health care industry’s proficiency in recording and managing accurate and consistently formatted patient addresses and support more efficient patient matching and record linkage.

ONC’s information blocking regulations apply to interferences with the access, exchange, or use of electronic health information (EHI) (45 CFR Part 171) and define certain exceptions to the definition of information blocking. Thus, it’s important that those subject to the information blocking regulations – health care providers, developers of certified health IT, and health information networks/exchanges (cumulatively, “actors”) – understand what health information the regulations cover. So, what is EHI anyway?

ONC recently published two data briefs that explore the current state of patient electronic access to health information. These briefs provide new insights into the adoption of secure, standards-based APIs by hospitals, and their subsequent use by patients via their smartphone health apps.