Interoperability

Portrait of Steven Posnack

Why TEFCA’s Hardest Problem Isn’t Tech, It’s Trust

Steven Posnack | December 1, 2025

It wasn’t always so, but today we have technology available to exchange health information anywhere there’s an internet connection. What’s slowing us from doing so at nationwide scale is trust. The frictions are human and institutional. They cannot be addressed exclusively with technology. 
Let’s look at the policy triangle that affects each network participant’s sharing posture. On the first side, there’s the HIPAA Privacy Rule that permits but does not require responses to network queries for treatment purposes.

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Portrait of Catherine Strawley

A New Set of Indices to Measure Hospital Interoperability Progress

Catherine Strawley | August 7, 2025

What’s in a number? A lot, it turns out, especially when it comes to measuring interoperability progress. For well over a decade, we have collaborated with federal and private sector partners on interoperability-related surveys to answer a big picture question: “how are we doing?” Unlike other aspects of our lives where we can measure progress based on a single metric (like weight loss), measuring interoperability progress has become more challenging over time.

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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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