Standards come about for many reasons. They make things more efficient, cost effective, and safer to name a few. Often you’ll hear witty banter in the standards community (I know…right!?) about whether something is “fit for purpose.” This is also accompanied by the question, “what’s your use case?”

Opportunity knocks for NIH researchers, who will be able to leverage clinical data from electronic health record (EHR) systems with increased frequency and consistency. The passage of the 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) has charted a path toward increasing access to and interoperability of electronic health information for clinical care. This, in turn, has paved the way to leverage relevant policies, systems, and infrastructure to accelerate research. In parallel, researchers have been challenged to make data from a single research study,