The Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) standard (version 1.1, C-CDA 1.1) was first adopted in 2012 as part of the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC’s) 2014 Edition final rule. It took nearly three years after that rulemaking for certified health information technology (health IT) with C-CDA 1.1 capabilities to be widely deployed among health care providers. Today’s experience with respect to C-CDA-based interoperability reflects this now five year-old version, and, in some respects,

On May 9, 2016, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced the Move Health Data Forward Challenge to promote innovation in the area of consumer-mediated exchange. We challenged the health information technology industry to help find new technological ways to put consumers in the driver’s seat when it comes to how and when their health information can be shared.

Last week at Health Datapalooza 2017, Adam Culbertson (HIMSS Innovator in Residence at ONC) and I gave a five minute “coming attraction” presentation about a patient matching algorithm challenge ONC will launch in June. For the uninitiated, we use “patient matching” in health IT as shorthand to describe the techniques used to match the data about you held by one health care provider with the data about you held by another (or many others).

In our everyday lives standards enable tasks to be completed more efficiently, reduce configuration costs, and add predictability in markets that can help the lower barriers to entry for innovative products. However, experience has shown that just because technology includes “standardized” capabilities they are not necessarily used to their fullest extent nor are they always implemented in a “standardized” manner. From a health information technology (health IT) perspective, this is especially true when other non-standard/non-computable options exist (e.g.,