By Andrew Hayden, ONC
Twitter: @ONC_HealthIT
We are excited to continue a New Year’s tradition at ONC with the release of the annual Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition! The 2023 ISA Reference Edition, the ninth annual publication, reflects more than 150 comments received by ONC during a 60-day public comment period that closed September 30, 2022.
The ISA is ONC’s catalog of curated standards and implementation specifications for health information interoperability that reflects extensive feedback from industry and federal agencies. The web version of the ISA is updated on a regular basis as changes in the health IT standards environment become apparent or when public comments are received at any point throughout the year. The Reference Edition is a snapshot of the web version of the ISA compiled at the end of the year following a public comment period.
What’s New in 2023
From COVID-19 and public health to social determinants of health and health equity, each year we make sure the “interoperability needs” outlined in the ISA are relevant and up to date. This year is no exception; check out some of the key additions to the 2023 ISA Reference Edition:
- Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) Integration: Throughout the ISA, we strengthened linkages with ONC’s SVAP, identifying previous versions of national coordinator-approved standards, and seeding in the latest versions of 2022 Approved Standards. SVAP enables health IT developers to incorporate newer versions of secretary-adopted standards and implementation specifications, as part of the ‘Real World Testing’ Condition and Maintenance of Certification requirement (§ 170.405) from ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule.
- Pharmacy Interoperability: We consolidated interoperability needs aimed at safe and informed prescribing, medication management, and the exchange of medication data for various clinical and administrative purposes into a broader subsection titled ‘Pharmacy Interoperability.’ Previously these needs were organized under ‘Electronic Prescribing’ and ‘Drug Formulary’ subsections. We also added National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP®) SCRIPT Standard Implementation Guide Version 2022011 to all relevant pages and made updates to all Pharmacy Interoperability pages in response to public comments.
- Human and Social Services: Incorporating industry feedback, we added interoperability needs that relate to Information and Referral (I&R) Services in a new Human and Social Services subsection and an existing Resource Location. These standards enable health care provider referrals with human and social services.
- Adverse Event Reporting: Working with our federal colleagues at FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER) Biologics Effectiveness and Safety (BEST) Initiative, we added a new interoperability need in the Public Health Reporting section, Adverse Event Reporting, which contains a BEST implementation guide highlighting adverse event reporting of biologics.
- Additional Updates: We streamlined the Laboratory subsections in the ISA’s Vocabulary/Code Set/Terminology and Content/Structure sections, adding in new interoperability needs and standards. We also added a new Infrastructure subsection in the Services/Exchange section to highlight emerging standards and implementation guides born of the work of the HL7® FHIR® accelerator FHIR at Scale Taskforce and Unified Data Access Profiles (UDAP™).
As always, you may submit comments to the web version of the ISA throughout the year. To submit comments, please create a user account by clicking the button located at the top right of the ISA page and following the sequence of prompts.
Thank you for your continued feedback and support as we work to make the ISA as comprehensive as possible to improve interoperability for all stakeholders.
This article was originally published on the Health IT Buzz and is syndicated here with permission.