Standards

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 Shawn Spurlock

Advancements in Health IT: ASTP/ONC’s Approved SVAP Standards for 2025

Shawn Spurlock | June 30, 2025

As part of ASTP/ONC’s annual Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP), the Approved Standards for 2025 are now available. SVAP is designed to support industry interoperability needs and enable the use of newer standards in the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program). Beginning August 29, 2025, Health IT developers participating in the Certification Program can voluntarily incorporate the 2025 SVAP standards into their Certified Health IT Modules.

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Portrait of Avinash Shanbhag

Introducing the 2024 Draft Federal FHIR® Action Plan

Avinash Shanbhag | September 23, 2024

ASTP released the 2024 Draft Federal FHIR® Action Plan, a curated catalog of federal agency uses of the Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) standard and associated implementation specifications. Federal agencies are adopting and using FHIR to meet a range of agency needs, including facilitating care coordination and expanding individuals access to their health information. The draft action plan serves as a single resource for federal agencies and anyone else in the health IT community looking for the FHIR-based capabilities being used today by the federal government.

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Portrait of ONC

Improving Cancer Care Through Better Electronic Health Records: Voluntary Commitments and Call to Action

ONC | March 5, 2024

This blog post was authored by our colleagues at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and is cross-posted here on the Health IT Buzz Blog.
The Biden Cancer Moonshot aims to support and center patients and caregivers, and President Biden has made it clear that the American people deserve a health care system that they can rely on. That includes a system of electronic health records that gives patients and doctors the information they need to provide excellent patient care and improve outcomes.

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Portrait of Alison Kemp

FHIR Factories Help Researchers use EHR Data

Alison Kemp | December 4, 2023

Researchers, developers, and clinicians have new tools to help them access high-quality electronic health record (EHR) data more effectively. A 2020 ONC Leading Edge Acceleration Project (LEAP) in Health IT awardee, MedStar Health Research Institute, in collaboration with the Georgetown University Medical Center and HealthLab, developed two new data tools as part of MedStar’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR) Factories: An Evolving Digital Architecture to Scale Health Research project.

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