Portrait of John Bender ,

Inferno Redesigned: Easier, Faster, Extensible

John Bender | March 8, 2022

ONC is excited to announce the launch of the Inferno Framework and the (g)(10) Standardized API Test Kit, the new version of the testing method for the § 170.315(g)(10) criterion in the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program). This new edition of Inferno is the product of a continued evolution of health IT standards testing and is designed to be more useful for health IT developers and easier for the health IT community to leverage for different types of standards conformance testing.

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Portrait of Jeff Smith , , ,

An Upcoming Milestone in Our Interoperability Journey

Jeff Smith | March 3, 2022

It’s going to be a busy year – a really busy year. In 2022, much of the promise of the 21st Century Cures Act comes to certified health IT near you.
ONC dutifully monitors industry progress towards certification to the 2015 Edition Cures Update (Cures Update), which introduces new standards and functionalities that will benefit our health care system in a variety of ways. This includes improved interoperability through secure, standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and the United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 1 (USCDI v1);

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Portrait of Rachel Nelson , ,

Information Blocking Claims: By the Numbers

Rachel Nelson | February 28, 2022

The 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act), signed into law by President Obama in 2016, directed ONC to implement a standardized process for the public to report claims of possible information blocking. The information blocking claims reporting process welcomes claims of possible information blocking from anyone who believes they may have experienced or observed information blocking. Any information received by ONC in connection with a claim or suggestion of possible information blocking and that could reasonably be expected to facilitate identification of the source of the information (claimant) is protected from disclosure under the Cures Act.

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Portrait of Pablo Ardaya

DYK: There’s a Conformance Review Process for Certified Health IT

Pablo Ardaya | February 8, 2022

The use of certified health IT in clinical settings is complicated. We know that certification testing in the lab is different from using certified health IT in the real world, somewhat akin to the difference between “efficacy” and “effectiveness” in drug development. This is why the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Certification Program) compels participating developers to ensure that their certified health IT conforms to the full range of requirements during and after lab-based testing. When suspected issues arise with certified health IT – sometimes called “non-conformities” – the Certification Program’s conformance review process helps provide a path to resolve them.

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Portrait of Wes Barker , , , ,

Shining a Light on FHIR Implementation: Progress Toward Publishing FHIR Endpoints

Wes Barker | February 1, 2022

Using APIs “without Special Effort”

The ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) supports patients’ and providers’ access to electronic health information (EHI) through Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) application programming interfaces (APIs). FHIR is ready for prime-time and the Cures Rule requires certain developers of certified health IT to provide a certified, FHIR API to their customer base by December 31, 2022.

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