Across the globe, countries are making significant investments and advancements to promote the movement of electronic health information.  Global health information technology (health IT) leaders are working collaboratively to develop, implement, and share best practices with other nations about projects that advance key elements of digital health.  These efforts can yield better patient outcomes, reduce administrative burden on providers, and enable patients’ access to their health data. One of ONC’s primary global health IT engagements for this work is the Global Digital Health Partnership (GDHP).

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The Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) recently approved a report and set of recommendations developed by the Intersection of Clinical and Administrative Data (ICAD) Task Force.

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On December 10, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services released a notice of proposed rulemaking Reducing Provider and Patient Burden by Improving Prior Authorization Processes, and Promoting Patients’ Electronic Access to Health Information, which builds on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Interoperability and Patient Access final rule released earlier this year. This new proposed rule includes additional proposed requirements for payers to implement standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) that can help address critical health care challenges such as improving the efficiency of prior authorization processes.

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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?”

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Successful health research hinges on the quality of the data used to advance discovery and needed health IT functionality. Electronic health data are increasingly available and can be a significant boon for the medical research community. Coupled with ubiquitous use of consumer and patient health technologies and increasing prevalence of application programming interfaces, or APIs, there is potential to expand existing data sources for research.

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