Health IT Policy

Portrait of Brett Andriesen

Coming Soon: The 2022 Tech Forum is Around the Corner!

Brett Andriesen | August 22, 2022

Registration is open for the 2022 ONC Tech Forum! This year’s event will be held virtually over three consecutive “Forum Fridays” on September 9, 16 and 23.
Come join us to hear from industry, government leaders, and ONC staff about the progress made over the past year in health IT. We’ll discuss how ONC and stakeholders are working together to meet today’s challenges, while laying the groundwork for a future digital health care system that advances health care delivery,

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Portrait of Avinash Shanbhag

On the Road to Cures Update: Certified API Technology

Avinash Shanbhag | August 19, 2022

The moments we’ve all been waiting for since 2016 are fast approaching: the 21st Century Cures Act infrastructure is coming into place in 2022! The Cures Act laid out a vision for a rich health IT ecosystem of standards-based APIs and nationwide health information networks to securely open up electronically accessible information to patients themselves and to health care professionals supporting their care. As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, progress on nationwide network integration via TEFCA continues apace,

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Portrait of Rob Anthony

New Testing Method Available for Standardized API Criterion

Rob Anthony | July 7, 2022

ONC has approved the Drummond Group’s Drummond G10+ FHIR API powered by Touchstone tool, a new alternative test method (ATM) for testing conformance to ONC’s §170.315(g)(10) Standardized API for patient and population services certification criterion. Through this new ATM, software developers will now have a new option for conformance testing in addition to the previously approved Inferno (g)(10) Standardized API Test Kit. The approval of Drummond’s testing method continues ONC’s mission to further diversify the suite of test methods used as part of the ONC Health IT Certification Program.

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Portrait of Jeff Smith

An Upcoming Milestone in Our Interoperability Journey

Jeff Smith | March 3, 2022

It’s going to be a busy year – a really busy year. In 2022, much of the promise of the 21st Century Cures Act comes to certified health IT near you.
ONC dutifully monitors industry progress towards certification to the 2015 Edition Cures Update (Cures Update), which introduces new standards and functionalities that will benefit our health care system in a variety of ways. This includes improved interoperability through secure, standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) and the United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 1 (USCDI v1);

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Portrait of Wes Barker

Shining a Light on FHIR Implementation: Progress Toward Publishing FHIR Endpoints

Wes Barker | February 1, 2022

Using APIs “without Special Effort”

The ONC’s Cures Act Final Rule (Cures Rule) supports patients’ and providers’ access to electronic health information (EHI) through Health Level Seven (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) application programming interfaces (APIs). FHIR is ready for prime-time and the Cures Rule requires certain developers of certified health IT to provide a certified, FHIR API to their customer base by December 31, 2022.

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