Since 2021, the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (hereafter ASTP) and the American Board of Family Medicine (ABFM) have collaborated to develop and field survey questions designed to better understand family physicians’ experience using health information technology (health IT) in primary care. We’ve now fielded questions for three years (2022-2024) through multiple questionnaires, and the results have driven data briefs and studies.

ONC’s USCDI+ program recently reached a milestone as part of a joint initiative started in August 2022 with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). HRSA and HRSA Health Center Program grantees launched one of the first real-world implementations using the Health Level 7 International (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) Bulk Data Access standard as part of a federal program.

There has been significant progress in interoperability among providers for treatment purposes, and while there is still considerable work to do, we now need to broaden our scope to also focus on payer-provider interoperability. The Interoperability Rules  finalized by our colleagues at CMS have laid down important cornerstones, and we at ONC are continuing to explore complementary infrastructure and policies to advance those efforts.

In the last three and a half years, we have been hard at work advancing the way interoperability supports the care environment. From Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) implementation to the HTI-1 Final Rule to information sharing initiatives, we look at all facets of the interoperability prism in our work. And, our work continues. On the heels of the release of the HTI-1 Final Rule, my team is hard at work on developing the Health Data,