By Karen B. DeSalvo, M.D., M.P.H., M.Sc., and
Erica Galvez/Interoperability and Exchange Portfolio Manager, ONC
On October 15, 2014 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) convenes the first joint meeting of the Health Information Technology Policy and Standards Committees. We intend to spend the day discussing interoperability in the health information ecosystem.
Committee members will hear a final report from the Joint Jason Task Force, an update from the Interoperability Governance Sub-Committee and an interim report from ONC’s Interoperability Portfolio Manager. These presentations mark several months of dedicated work developing a more detailed, shared roadmap to achieve interoperability in this nation, as a means to see that everyone has access to better quality, more affordable care and better health overall.
These conversations follow our release, in June of 2014, of the high-level document Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure. This paper describes ONC’s broad vision and framework to develop a clear pathway towards interoperability. It is intended as an invitation to health IT stakeholders – clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policy makers and many others – to join ONC to develop a defined, shared roadmap that would allow us to collectively achieve health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of a learning health system.