Authors

Alicia Morton

Portrait of Alicia Morton

Director, ONC Health IT Certification Program

Captain Morton arrived at ONC in 2005 to lead the contract for the first voluntary EHR certification program, CCHIT. Since 2005, she has worked in a variety of roles within several ONC offices. Recent areas of focus have been clinical decision support projects, SHARP C grant, and the University Based Training grant program. In her most recent roles, she served as the Deputy Chief Medical Officer alongside Jacob Reider and a Senior Advisor to the Office of Standards & Technology.

Prior to joining ONC, Captain Morton was stationed at CMS (2003-2005) where she managed the systems development component of the Doctor’s Office Quality-Information Technology (DOQ-IT) project. She was the lead technical project manager for the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) initiative and integral to the Vista Office EHR project. In addition to her technical expertise, Alicia has more than 9 years of full-time clinical nursing experience, during which she gained first-hand experience utilizing EHR systems. From 1999-2003, she was a Senior Clinical Research Nurse at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Clinical Center on a bone marrow transplant/ hematology & oncology unit. From 1994-1999 she served on active duty in the U.S. Navy stationed at the National Naval Medical Center Bethesda and aboard the USNS Comfort. After completing her obligation to the US Navy she had an interservice transfer to the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She recently achieved the rank of Captain.

Alicia holds a Doctorate of Nursing Practice (D.N.P.) and an M.S. in Nursing Informatics from the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She is ANCC Board Certfied in Nursing Informatics and holds a B.S. in nursing from the University of Kentucky. She is adjunct faculty and a member of the advisory board to the University of Maryland School of Nursing, Graduate Informatics program.

Alicia Morton's Latest Blog Posts

Celebrating National Nurses Week: Reflections on Health Information Technology

Alicia Morton | May 12, 2020

As we celebrate 200 years since Florence Nightingale’s birth and National Nurses Week comes to a close, the nurses at ONC would like to acknowledge the tremendous work being done on the front lines by our colleagues fighting this pandemic. We are extremely proud to be a part of such a noble profession and we humbly pay gratitude to all those tirelessly working to protect, preserve, and care for our nation’s health during this unique time in our history.

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Advancing Interoperable Social Determinants of Health Data

Alicia Morton | December 12, 2019

The ability to capture, use, and exchange many aspects of electronic health information has greatly advanced with the increased adoption of health information technology (health IT). Yet the use of data reflecting social determinants of health (SDOH) – the conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play – remains much more limited across healthcare. There is a growing recognition across healthcare that by capturing and accessing SDOH data during the course of care,

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Upgrading the Certified Health IT Product List: Understanding Corrective Action Information

Alicia Morton | May 24, 2016

Earlier this year, we completed an extensive upgrade to the Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) to support 2015 Edition certification as well as several other ongoing initiatives. Now, CHPL visitors can see surveillance results for health IT products and developers that have been found at any time not to comply with any requirements of the ONC Health IT Certification Program. This additional transparency—which is required for 2014 Edition and 2015 Edition products—will help potential health IT purchasers assess how products perform in real-world settings and will alert existing customers and users to potential issues,

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Open Invitation to Submit Health IT Test Tools or Procedures

Alicia Morton | July 6, 2015

Improving and streamlining the testing and certification of health IT has long been a goal of ONC. To that end, on June 9th we published a notice in the Federal Register that reintroduced a flexibility included in the ONC Health IT Certification Program that allows the National Coordinator to consider test procedures, test tools, and test data developed by any person or entity for approved use.

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