Join us on December 1, 2020, as we spotlight how application programming interface (API)-forward policies and industry actions are accelerating interoperability. This event will include updates from federal agencies as well as presentations and demos from industry partners that highlight how work underway is advancing innovation and competition in the health IT ecosystem. A panel discussion will also be held at the end of the day.  

ONC is participating in the AMIA 2020 Virtual Symposium, speaking at a number of health IT focused sessions. The AMIA Annual Symposium brings together informatics professionals from diverse backgrounds committed to transforming health through informatics. For more information visit the AMIA website.

Join ONC for an informational webinar about the Interim Final Rule with Comment Period on Monday, November 2 at 3:00 pm EST. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ONC is extending compliance dates and timeframes for Information Blocking and the ONC Health IT Certification Program. The Interim Final Rule includes:

Extending the applicability date for the Information Blocking provisions.

Extending the compliance dates in the ONC Health IT Certification Program (Program), including certain 2015 Edition health IT certification criteria and Conditions and Maintenance of Certification requirements.

Making changes to the Program by updating standards and clarifying regulatory text for specific certification criteria.

Making technical corrections and clarifications.

Read more about the IFC    

Recording Event Presentation - Presentation Slides [PDF - 1,993 KB]

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is hosting the Advancing Interoperability: Social Determinants of Health Workshop, a one day virtual workshop on Monday, September 21, 2020. As part of ONC’s collaborative approach for Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), the objective of this workshop is to gather health care and human services providers from various professional societies to understand their approaches to integrating SDOH data into value-base care and to discuss tools to accomplish these goals and the challenges to reaching them. This workshop will also provide stakeholders information and tools needed for the development of the social determinants of health data management in clinical practice guidelines and maintenance of certification activities. In the fall of 2019, four new Interoperability Needs were added to Section I: Social, Psychological, and Behavioral Data representing drug use, food insecurity, housing insecurity, and transportation insecurity of the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA). Many of the standards or specifications are at production for the implementation maturity level and are still requesting feedback. Incorporating social determinants of health such as those included in the ISA in health care models is of increased interest when it comes to value-based payments. More payers are developing novel ways to address SDOH issues, however providers still struggle with the collection of SDOH data and how to use and share the data in an interoperable and beneficial way that is not burdensome. This workshop will provide attendees the opportunity to share any advancements in standards that are being used which may or may not include standards included in the ISA. View Slides [PDF - 9.6 MB] Agenda – Download PDF Document Speaker Biographies – Download PDF Document  

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is hosting a one day virtual workshop on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, for Clinical Decision Support (CDS). A central promise of CDS is to help reduce the burden of information overload and increasingly complex clinical knowledge and guidelines posed to clinicians by making information about a patient easier to assess or more apparent, or to foster optimal problem solving, decision making, and action. CDS must also deliver the right information  to the right person in the right format through the right channel at the right time in the workflow. While CDS is recognized as a way to improve health care and make it more efficient, clinical users’ experiences with implemented CDS have been sub-optimal, and CDS development and deployment remain inconsistent and fraught with re-work, even among HHS agencies. This workshop will identify novel approaches being used in CDS that present opportunities for collaboration and harmonization. Federal partners and key public stakeholders are invited to attend to learn about the current efforts in CDS and opportunities to leverage federal work to help public efforts, and vice-versa. The expected outcomes include an identification of CDS silos, an understanding of the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning in CDS and solutions to address cross agency/stakeholder CDS issues. View Slides [PDF - 16.97 MB] Agenda – Download PDF Document Speaker Biographies – Download PDF Document National Academy of Medicine report Optimizing Strategies for Clinical Decision Support Report – Download PDF Document

Join ONC and members of the FHIR at Scale Taskforce (FAST) initiative for a full day workshop titled: “FAST, An Architectural Framework for Ecosystem Infrastructure.” Having developed and proposed solutions to address technical infrastructure challenges associated with deploying FHIR solutions “at scale,” the FAST community now seeks to explore and solicit feedback on the both the architectural considerations and pathways to implementation for each of these solutions. The FAST Initiative recognizes that ongoing collaboration and coordination with industry leading efforts and a broader group of industry stakeholders is key to understanding industry challenges and successes, ensuring an accurate industry wide gap analysis, maintaining awareness of new developments, and avoiding duplication of efforts. To that end, this workshop will support The FAST Initiative’s goal to maintain transparency and communication, while welcoming industry feedback that can inform our collective efforts and approaches. For more information on the FAST initiative, please review the following resources:

The Official FAST Confluence site

The FAST 2020 Mid-Year Report

The FAST 2019 End of Year Report

Workshop Goals:

Update community, raise industry awareness and share the FAST progress and solutions (V3 solutions documents draft).

Gather industry feedback, engage target future “landing places” and figuring out how to put solutions into practice.

Feedback/content to feed into FAST Action Plan (e.g., ‘homes’, deployment considerations, etc.).

Present solutions into context – the FAST Ecosystem Architecture.

Breakout Session Approach:

Facilitator/moderator to introduce topic/content.

FAST panelists to support the facilitated discussion.

Industry reaction Panel, not presenting, but responding to questions/debating the FAST identify discussion points.

Broader discussion with other attendees/participants via Q & A.

Join us for a final working session on patient identity and patient matching. We invite individuals and organizations to provide input and insight into existing challenges and promising innovations in patient identity and matching. This final session will focus on the following key areas: privacy and security, research and evaluation, standards, and innovation. This feedback will inform ONC’s report to Congress on evaluating the effectiveness of technical and operational methods that improve identification of patients. ONC is soliciting feedback from all attendees, presentations are not required. Attendees will have the opportunity to submit comments during and after the session to Identity.ONC@hhs.gov.

ONC hosted an all-virtual Tech Forum, convening industry experts and federal partners to continue the summertime tradition we started with the “Interoperability Forum” in 2017. We discussed the exciting technical innovations that are happening in health IT and have the potential to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare in support of improved health outcomes.  

Recording Event Presentation - Presentation Slides [PDF - 2.0MB]

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Thank you to those who joined us in-person and virtually for the 2020 ONC Annual Meeting! This year’s event, Connecting Policy and Technology: Bringing the EHR to the Patient, gathered health IT partners for a combination of plenaries and breakout sessions that covered a variety of health IT, healthcare, and innovation topics.  Slides from presenters will be posted on this page in the near future. Keep coming back as we'll post the presentations on an ongoing basis.    Annual Meeting Webcast Archive  

Recording Event Presentation -  Presentation Slides [PDF - 1910KB]