Earlier today we announced the release of the Project US@ (“Project USA”) Technical Specification Final Version 1.0 and thereby completed our one year goal to coordinate the creation of a health care specification that could be used across the industry for representing patient addresses (mailing, physical, billing, etc.). This new “tech spec” will advance the health care industry’s proficiency in recording and managing accurate and consistently formatted patient addresses and support more efficient patient matching and record linkage.

Because of advances in interoperability, it’s becoming increasingly common for people and their healthcare providers to access and share information from electronic health records (EHRs) using apps. Could this same approach allow large-scale data sharing between healthcare provider organizations, payors (Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers), or public health officials? An app providing shared insights into a common dataset could transform the way value-based care is delivered and measured.

This post was written by guest contributors.
To battle the COVID-19 pandemic, health professionals need immediate access to relevant health data in order to inform clinical decision making, conduct timely research, understand trends, and inform response efforts.
The pandemic, though, highlighted a known shortcoming of our nation’s health data infrastructure. Decision makers, like health care providers, must rely on information reporting services outside the health care system to obtain real-time epidemiological data that, even then,