ONC, in partnership with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today released an update to the HHS Security Risk Assessment (SRA) Tool. This tool provides support for small- and medium-sized health care organizations in their efforts to assess security risks. The newly enhanced version of the SRA Tool includes a variety of new features like improved navigation throughout the assessment sections, export options for reports, and enhanced user interface scaling.

On the heels of the new USCDI ONDEC Submission System launched in July, ONC is giving you even more opportunities to provide feedback and input into standards and interoperability efforts this summer!

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity to expand and accelerate innovative uses of electronic health information via health information exchanges (HIEs) to support state and local public health agencies. Strengthening health data exchange and use between HIEs and state and local public health agencies will help communities to better prevent, respond to, and recover from public health emergencies, including disasters and pandemics such as COVID-19.

Over the past decade, ONC has worked with health information technology (health IT) developers, standards development organizations, healthcare providers, patient advocates, health information exchange (HIE) administrators, state public health agencies, and other stakeholders to advance an interoperable health IT infrastructure across the country. ONC has also worked to expand access to health IT solutions across the care continuum to support medical specialty care and sites of service.

The wait is finally over! The ONC Cures Act Final Rule went into effect on June 30, 2020, and since its release one of the most common questions ONC has received is when and how can we submit proposals for new data elements in USCDI? The answer is, now!