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Learn more about HHS’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)
Interoperability Checking In on Hospital EHR APIs: Can Providers and Patients Access and Share Health Data via Apps?
Catherine Strawley | September 11, 2023
Thanks to a decade of effort, nearly every U.S. hospital today stores health data electronically. To put that data to work, however, clinicians and patients need to be able to access and appropriately share that data.
To implement the 21st Century Cures Act and help meet those needs, ONC’s Health IT Certification Program adopted new requirements and standards for application programming interfaces (APIs) that support the secure exchange of patient data between electronic health records (EHRs) apps.
Health IT Certification Getting Ready for EHI Export: A Quick Guide
Robert Anthony | August 29, 2023
To export or not to export? That is the question.
All certified Health IT Modules that are part of a health IT product that stores electronic health information (EHI) are required to certify to the Electronic Health Information export criterion (45 CFR 170.315 (b)(10)) and make the functionality available to end users by December 31, 2023. As this deadline approaches, we thought it would be helpful to revisit the requirements of § 170.315(b)(10) and which product types are required to certify to this criterion.
Inside ONC ONC Staff Profile: David Hunt – Working to Advance Patient Safety Through Health IT
David Hunt | August 24, 2023
As a medical officer and the medical director for patient safety in ONC’s office of policy (OPOL), David advises ONC on what it can do to improve the safety and safe use of health IT. He also helps his colleagues in OPOL understand how ONC’s work may affect practicing clinicians.
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Research and Scientific Advancement Advancing Genomic Data-Sharing for Research and Patient Care: Sync for Genes Project Delivers Final Report and Toolkit
Stephanie Garcia | August 21, 2023
Genomic variations can affect a patient’s risk for cancer, response to medications, and numerous other vital health outcomes. In fact, nine of the ten leading causes of death in the U.S. are influenced by genomic factors. The need for systems that help clinicians integrate genomics into care decisions has grown in importance.
Recognizing this need, in 2017 ONC launched Sync for Genes, a project that sought to advance standards and tools to effectively integrate genomic information into clinical workflows.
Health IT Certification, Interoperability Lantern: Lighting the Way on FHIR Implementation
Wes Barker | August 14, 2023
Turning Evidence into Action
The ONC Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) supports patients’ and providers’ access to electronic health information through Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) application programming interfaces (APIs). To ensure that secure, standardized FHIR APIs certified through the ONC Health IT Certification Program can be accessed and used “without special effort,” the Cures Rule included a requirement to ensure that app developers could readily lookup the service base URLs (i.e.,
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