Time flies! It has been over a year since ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule was first released and since then ONC has been busy advancing the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) and enabling the healthcare industry to voluntarily implement newer versions of adopted standards via the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) for the purposes of the ONC Health IT Certification.

Over six years ago, ONC embarked with all of you on an ambitious initiative to create a shared, nationwide interoperability roadmap (the Roadmap). In typical fashion, we produced a draft, many of you shared your comments (about this time in 2015), and we released the final Roadmap in October, 2015.

Health equity and social determinants of health (SDOH) data were a recurring theme at this year’s ONC Annual Meeting. Leveraging these important data, which reflect where people are born, live, learn, work and play can have a significant impact on patient care and public health. SDOH data provide opportunities for promoting health equity and improving patient outcomes if they are better integrated into the electronic health record (EHR).

Today, ONC is pleased to announce two demonstration sites selected for Sync for Genes Phase 4. Since its launch in 2017, the ONC Sync for Genes project has advanced the standardized sharing of genomic information between laboratories, providers, patients, and researchers. Sync for Genes uses the Health Level 7 (HL7®) International FHIR® standard to enable the electronic sharing of genomic data.  

Precision medicine creates treatment and prevention strategies that meet patient needs by considering individual variability in their genome, environment, and lifestyle. While precision medicine can revolutionize health care, it requires access to an unprecedented volume and variety of data, and an infrastructure that rapidly brings new discoveries to bear.  Recently, we published an article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association that describes health IT’s vital role in precision medicine based on key insights from a series of ONC projects supporting the Precision Medicine Initiative.