By Thomas A. Mason – The ONC awards more than $38 million in grant to 20 organizations from 19 states across the country to further efforts toward achieving better care, smarter spending and healthier people.
Read More
By Andrew Gettinger MD – As we focus on making our health care ecosystem interoperable and building a continually improving learning health system, we need to ensure health IT enables safe, high quality care. We also know that doctors, nurses, and other clinicians that are all part of the care team are frustrated by health IT systems that are not coordinated or optimized to their workflow.
By CAPT Alicia Morton & Tricia Lee Wilkins – Improving and streamlining the testing and certification of health IT has long been a goal of ONC. To that end, on June 9th we published a notice in the Federal Register that reintroduced a flexibility included in the ONC Health IT Certification Program that allows the National Coordinator to consider test procedures, test tools, and test data developed by any person or entity for approved use.
By Karen B. DeSalvo & Brandon McBride – In late 2011, the President announced a White House Rural Council initiative lead by the HHS and USDA to invest in rural health and link rural doctors and hospitals to financing for health IT. The initiative was designed to address the need for financing to support the adoption of health IT systems in rural communities.
By Jon White MD & Steven Posnack – Spring has arrived in Washington and it is the season of change. In our ongoing pursuit of agile and effective public service, we turn our attention today to how we get timely and effective public input.
By Karen DeSalvo – I am optimistic about the bright future we have to leverage health information technology to enable better health for everyone in this country. One year ago, we called upon the health IT community to move beyond adoption and focus on interoperability, on unlocking the data, so it can be put to the many important uses demanded by consumers, doctors, hospitals, payers, and others who are part of the learning health system.
By Thomas A. Mason MD & Janet Wright MD – About 1 of 3 U.S. adults—67 million people—have high blood pressure, also called hypertension. High blood pressure increases the risk for a variety of diseases, including stroke, coronary artery disease, peripheral vascular disease, heart and kidney failure, and atrial fibrillation. High blood pressure is also called the “silent killer” because it often has no warning signs or symptoms, and many people do not know they have it.
By Lucia Savage – In the draft Interoperability Roadmap, ONC committed to helping individuals, providers, and the health and health IT community better understand how existing federal law, HIPAA, supports interoperable exchange of information for health.
By Matthew Swain & Erica Galvez – Advancing secure and interoperable exchange is a core component of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020 and the focus of the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.