Federal agencies offer updates on TEFCA, interoperability milestones

Federal agencies offer updates on TEFCA, interoperability milestones

On February 13, the government leaders thanked the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and six Qualified Health Information Networks (QHIN) for working to create a nationwide interoperability network under the 21st Century Cures Act. The ‘Network of Networks’ 
At the U.S. Department of Health and Human services, Secretary Xavier Becerra presented certificates of recognition to the CommonWell Health Alliance, eHealth Exchange, Epic TEFCA Interoperability Services, Health Gorilla, Kno2 and KONZA for moving into the pre-production testing process of the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement.
With the framework, ONC and the Sequoia Project, TEFCA’s recognized coordinating entity, seek to establish…

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Epic, eHealth Exchange and CommonWell among HHS-approved QHIN candidates

Epic, eHealth Exchange and CommonWell among HHS-approved QHIN candidates

A half-dozen organizations on Monday were approved by the Department of Health and Human Services as the inaugural batch of candidates to participate as qualified health information networks as part of ONC’s Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement.During a Feb. 13 event at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, six healthcare organizations were approved to implement TEFCA as prospective QHINs: CommonWell Health Alliance, eHealth Exchange, Epic TEFCA Interoperability Services, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and KONZA National Network.
In a blog post, National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi recognized those organizations, “for their willingness to voluntarily step up and meet the…

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95% of Certified Health IT Developers Met ONC Cures Act Deadline

95% of Certified Health IT Developers Met ONC Cures Act Deadline

– More than 95 percent of certified health IT developers met the Cures Act Final Rule compliance deadline to provide customers with new technology, according to an ONC HealthITBuzz blog post. The Cures Act Final Rule mandated many changes to the Certification Program, including four updates set to have long-lasting interoperability impacts on patients, clinicians, and developers. ONC Certified Health IT developers must: Advance interoperability for patients and providers through the use of FHIR-based application programming interfaces (APIs);Enable patients, providers, and other stakeholders to have access to consistent data elements represented in at least version one of the United States Core…

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2021 Annual Meeting: Data Tagging & Consent of Sensitive Health Data (Stakeholder Led Efforts)

2021 Annual Meeting: Data Tagging & Consent of Sensitive Health Data (Stakeholder Led Efforts)

March 29, 2021Data Tagging and consent are important for improving interoperability while protecting privacy and choice. Data tagging can support various use cases including for social determinants of health data (SDOH) use and interoperability. Multidisciplinary, stakeholder led activities are focused on advancing data tagging adoption and use, in part to help eliminate disparities and improve health equity, and to support the interoperability of sensitive health data including, in certain instances, for SDOH. This session will inform attendees of current ONC and external stakeholder activities for moving sensitive health data to support holistic person centered health. Presenters will share progress on different…

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How Technology Integration Supports Precision Medicine

How Technology Integration Supports Precision Medicine

Precision Health Can Be Applied to All DisciplinesThe University of California, Irvine, has integrated its technology to create targeted health and wellness strategies for patients. In February 2022, the university launched the Institute for Precision Health, an interdisciplinary campuswide initiative to develop solutions in precision medicine. A future brick-and-mortar home for IPH will let data scientists collaborate with clinicians to develop analytics tools.
“Precision health is truly an amalgamation of multiple critical pillars. Understanding the multidisciplinary nature of this work is really how IPH came about,” says Dr. Peter Chang, ­assistant professor in residence at UCI’s Department of Radiological Sciences. He formed…

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Community Clinics Look to EHR Implementation to up Patient Experience

Community Clinics Look to EHR Implementation to up Patient Experience

– Texas-based Legacy Community Health Clinic has announced it will transition from its outdated legacy system and move forward with an EHR implementation that will drive the patient experience while improving patient data access. The project, funded by a $1 million federal grant, will connect the health clinic’s 55 locations through one system and provide over 200,000 patients with continual data access. Providing patients access to their medical records was challenging for the community health providers, who previously had to fax health information. Faxed patient health data often sits on the fax machine for hours or even days before it gets…

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Florida ACO achieves value-based care goals with real-time patient data platform

Florida ACO achieves value-based care goals with real-time patient data platform

Achieving value-based care goals remains a difficult challenge for many providers who also are trying hard to provide equitable care. Pathways Health Partners, an accountable care organization that works with more than 280 providers across multiple clinical specialties, works with organizations to address these issues.THE PROBLEM
“Ensuring access to patient records in real time, regardless of where patient care is delivered, was an ongoing hurdle for our organization,” said Ricardo Matos, CIO at Pathways. “It was a significant limitation with regard to our providers making timely, informed care decisions.
“And we knew from our experience working with partners over the years that trying…

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Apollo Hospitals expands access to AI decision support tool

Apollo Hospitals expands access to AI decision support tool

Doctors across India can now access an AI clinical decision support tool from Apollo Hospitals.Last year, the hospital chain launched the Apollo Clinical Intelligence Engine (CIE), a self-learning engine that analyses symptoms, determines causes, and helps recommend the best course of action. 
The technology, which is built, maintained, and periodically reviewed by an in-house team of over 500 Apollo doctors and specialists, is capable of analysing huge amounts of data – it has over 1,300 conditions and 800 symptoms in its vocabulary at present – to help identify patterns that may be otherwise missed by manual diagnoses. 
Built using four decades worth of hospital data,…

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Overhaul 'clunky' My Health Record, Medicare task force recommends

Overhaul ‘clunky’ My Health Record, Medicare task force recommends

A task force of healthcare leaders has given their recommendations to invigorate Australia’s primary healthcare, including the need to upgrade My Health Record and enable more health data sharing. WHAT IT’S ABOUT
The Australian government assembled the Strengthening Medicare Task Force to help identify the “most pressing investments needed in primary care.” It is focused on pointing out immediate actions to strengthen Medicare, the country’s universal healthcare scheme, and lay the foundations for longer-term reform and investment in the primary care system. Their recommendations also build on the government’s 10-year plan for primary care.
One of the task force’s major recommendations is to “modernise” MHR….

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