Over the past 8 years, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) – in collaboration with our federal partners and the private sector – has ushered in an era of widespread health information technology (IT) adoption and use throughout the country. This historic advancement has set the stage for us to transition our focus to the seamless and secure sharing of electronic health information.

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On January 10, ONC submitted the recently published 2017 Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA), a catalog of standards and implementation specifications that are or could be used to advance the seamless and secure flow of electronic health information, to the Health IT Policy and Health IT Standards Committees for review and discussion.

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Last year, Health Level Seven International (HL7) released an implementation guide that provides a standardized way to exchange the catalogs of (thousands) laboratory tests and services that a clinical laboratory can perform. We wanted to highlight the implementation guide’s potential to not only advance interoperability, but also to create cost savings and improve patient care.

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Today, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) published the draft 2017 Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) for public comment.  The ISA is a coordinated catalog of standards and implementation specifications that are available for use by the health information technology (health IT) industry to meet interoperability needs.  It is a key element of ONC’s continued implementation of the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap and directly supports the Interoperability Commitments that leading health IT developers,

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In April we asked for your input and comments on ways for us to measure how well our nation’s health care system is doing in achieving “widespread interoperability,” as required by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). Separate from the provisions that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has proposed to implement through the Quality Payment Program for payment of office-based Medicare physicians, MACRA specifically calls on HHS to establish metrics for the exchange and use of clinical information to facilitate coordinated care and improve patient outcomes between participants in the Medicare and Medicaid Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs and others nationwide.

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