Portrait of Mike Berry

HITAC Recommendations on ONC Adopted Standards

Mike Berry | November 10, 2022

The Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) recently submitted their final report and recommendations related to ONC adopted standards and implementation specifications referenced in federal regulations. The report and recommendations are based on the work of the HITAC’s 2022 Adopted Standards Task Force and are responsive to a 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) (42 U.S. Code § 300jj–13) provision that requires the national coordinator to convene stakeholders to review the existing set of adopted standards and implementation specifications and make recommendations with respect to whether to maintain the use of such standards and implementation specifications;

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Portrait of Laura M. Urioste

Actionable ways to meet the 2015 Edition Cures Update requirements

Laura M. Urioste | November 8, 2022

The 2015 Edition Cures Update made several changes to the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program), including new functionalities; new, removed, and revised criteria; and new requirements establishing the Conditions and Maintenance of Certification. This means that most health IT developers of certified health IT (certified health IT developers) will be required to update their certified Health IT Modules by December 31, 2022. As we approach this deadline, it is important to remember that meeting the Certification Program requirements and avoiding non-conformities is up to each certified health IT developer.

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Portrait of Micky Tripathi

OSTP, in Partnership with ONC, Seeks Input on Optimizing Data Capture for Clinical Trials

Micky Tripathi | October 31, 2022

This blog post is co-authored with Jennifer Roberts, Assistant Director for Health Technologies, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Grail Sipes, Assistant Director for Biomedical Regulatory Policy, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for a coordinated clinical trials enterprise, one that can swiftly characterize emerging viral threats and evaluate the effectiveness of vaccines, therapeutics, and other countermeasures across a diversity of trial participants.

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Portrait of Alex Baker

Interoperability in Action: ONC Informs CMS Ruling on Hospital Measures for Public Health and Health Equity Reporting

Alex Baker | October 25, 2022

This is the second blog post in a two-part series that examines how policies finalized by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the 2023 Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) final rule are advancing the use of interoperable health IT. Previously, we looked at a new measure under CMS’s Promoting Interoperability Program that rewards hospitals for exchanging information under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA. 

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Portrait of Kathryn Marchesini , , ,

Two Sides of the AI/ML Coin in Health Care

Kathryn Marchesini | October 19, 2022

As we’ve previously discussed, algorithms—step by step instructions (rules) to perform a task or solve a problem, especially by a computer—have been widely used in health care for decades.  One clear use of these algorithms is through evidence-based, clinical decision support interventions (DSIs). Today, we see a rapid growth in data-based, predictive DSIs, which use models created using machine learning (ML) algorithms or other statistical approaches that analyze large volumes of real-world data (called “training data”) to find patterns and make recommendations.

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