Friday, January 30, 2015—The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today released a draft document titled “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap Version 1.0.” According to the ONC, an office of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the document is a “proposal to deliver better care and result in healthier people through the safe and secure exchange and use of electronic health information.”
The new document is a sequel to a previous “vision paper” released in June 2014 with the title “Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure.” The draft Roadmap, says the ONC, incorporates “months of comment and feedback from hundreds of health and health IT experts from across the nation through ONC advisory group feedback, listening sessions and an online forum.”
Because the Roadmap calls for ONC to identify the best available technical standards for core interoperability functions, the office is also releasing what it calls the “Draft 2015 Interoperability Advisory.” This document offers ONC’s take on “the best available standards and implementation specifications for clinical health information interoperability as of December 2014.”
The ONC describes the draft Roadmap as being “based on a core set of building blocks that are needed to achieve interoperability”:
1. Core technical standards and functions.
2. Certification to support adoption and optimization of health IT products and services.
3. Privacy and security protections for health information.
4. Supportive business, clinical, cultural, and regulatory environments.
5. Rules of engagement and governance.
The draft Roadmap and the Standards Advisory can be found at www.healthit.gov/interoperability. The public comments on the Roadmap will be accepted through April 3; comments on the standards advisory will be allowed through May 1.
