Interoperability

Portrait of Jordan Everson

Achieving Widespread Use of Direct Secure Messaging by US Hospitals

Jordan Everson | July 15, 2025

In 2010, our office helped launch the Direct Project amidst the rollout of the ONC Health IT Certification Program and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs. The Direct Project created Direct Secure Messaging, a simple, secure, scalable, and standards-based method to send health information between partners and to provide a straightforward pathway to acquire unique provider and organizational addresses to engage in exchange that resembles secure email. Direct was first piloted in two projects: in Minnesota,

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Portrait of Micky Tripathi

Advancing Cancer Care through FHIR-Based Reporting: Updates from USCDI+ Cancer

Micky Tripathi | January 8, 2025

Recognizing the importance of seamless data exchange in oncology, six health IT vendors have committed to supporting USCDI+ Cancer data elements (two more organizations pledged to promote cancer-related activities in their work), marking a significant step toward a more interoperable and standardized healthcare system. The White House announced these activities in March, 2024 to improve cancer care through enhanced utilization of EHR data, highlighting ASTP’s efforts around the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI),

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Portrait of Wei Chang

National Survey Reveals New Insights on Health Information Organizations

Wei Chang | January 7, 2025

Health information exchange organizations (HIOs) are networks that enable the electronic exchange of health information across participating health care providers, public health agencies, payers, and other entities. They also have a unique, wide-angle lens on the state of interoperability nationwide. Since 2020, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) has partnered with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Civitas Networks for Health (Civitas) to survey HIOs. We recently published a number of studies from the most recent survey,

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Portrait of Micky Tripathi

What Makes TEFCA Different: New Standard Operating Procedure Strengthens Trust

Micky Tripathi | December 10, 2024

The “T” in Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™ (TEFCA™) is an important part of what drives our work. So too is the public-private engagement we have created over the past seven years. As we launched TEFCA last year we did so with the expectation that we would need to make iterative adjustments over time to help it grow. That’s why we’ve recently released a new standard operating procedure (SOP) to guide how organizations seeking to participate in specific “Exchange Purposes” within TEFCA are vetted (see: Vetting Process SOP).  

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