By Teresa Zayas Caban, Kevin Chaney, MGS &
Don Rucker M.D. National Coordinator for Health Information Technology
Twitter: @ONC_HealthIT
The accelerated use of health IT has led to exponential growth in the amount and availability of electronic health data. Despite this progress, certain research and scientific breakthroughs may remain slow due to difficulties with health IT infrastructure and the lack of high quality health data. To better understand and address these challenges, ONC led the development of National Health IT Priorities for Research: A Policy and Development Agenda, which articulates a vision where research can happen more quickly and effectively.
Setting the Agenda
ONC led a review of relevant literature and programs, key interviews, and a workshop to identify electronic health data and health IT infrastructure gaps. Workshop attendees included representatives from federal agencies, technology vendors, researchers, and other stakeholders. ONC staff presented early versions of the Agenda at two American Medical Informatics Association conferences to further refine the content.
Supportive of both Goal 3 and Goal 4 in the updated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan (2020-2025), the Agenda has two specific goals aimed at modernizing our nation’s health IT infrastructure to enable research and discovery:
What’s Next?
The Agenda proposes strategies for each of the nine priorities. These strategies include a set of calls to action that must be advanced to achieve the vision set forth in the Agenda. The strategies and actions are intended to address relevant data, tools, or infrastructure needs over the next 3 to 5 years.
ONC has launched a variety of initiatives and activities to address the Agenda’s nine priorities, working in collaboration with other federal agencies. For example, ONC has partnered with the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) All of Us Research Program to accelerate precision medicine, including advancing standardized data sharing. And ONC’s Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health IT seek to overcome obstacles to well-designed, interoperable health IT supporting research and patient care. To achieve the goals in the Agenda, ONC collaborates with the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Veterans Health Administration on these initiatives – along with private sector stakeholders.
The vision put forward in the Agenda will enable researchers to pursue more complex questions and make faster, more reliable discoveries. These improvements along with the engagement of a wider, more representative population of research participants have the potential to transform the delivery of healthcare and result in better outcomes for patients.
View the full Agenda, peer-reviewed articles on the Agenda, and federal partnerships:
- National Health IT Priorities for Research: A Policy and Development Agenda
- “National Health Information Technology (IT) Priorities for Research: A Policy and Development Agenda,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
- “Leveraging the Health Information Technology (IT) Infrastructure to Advance Federal Research Priorities,” Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association
This article was originally published on Health IT Buzz and is syndicated here with permission.