ONC Announces CDS Framework and Interoperability Initiative

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is launching a new standards and interoperability framework, Health eDecisions. According to the ONC, the initiative, formerly known as CDS, will address standards for the ability to exchange clinical decision support interventions. It will operate as part of the ONC Standards & Interoperability Framework in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Medical Officer, which was also recently launched.

According to the ONC, there is a gap between what’s been done already with the standards and interoperability framework for CDS and the industry goal of producing updatable, findable, distributable, maintainable CDS interventions for use by EHR vendors, knowledge vendors, providers, and quality program leaders. The ONC says the creation of a standard format for sharable CDS will make for easier integration into EHR systems, and it will be more likely that such a sharable CDS structure is actually used by care providers.

“It is the intent of this new ONC effort to assemble input from leading technical contributors toward the establishment of a standard format for CDS interventions,” the ONC’s Jacob Reider and Alicia Morton, wrote in an email. The ONC is looking for volunteers to participate, registration can be found at: http://tinyurl.com/7mzhxmo.