Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) Alex Kontur wrote in a blog post on August 19 that the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) must ensure standards be put in place that support federal policy goals and enable developers to create interoperable health IT products.
Kontur explained that developing and adopting healthcare standards included a series of cooperative agreements between ASTP and Health Level Seven International (HL7), which started in 2015. “This collaboration has supported the development and growth of crucial health IT standards incorporated by ASTP regulations and the ONC Health IT Certification Program, as well as tooling and resources for HL7’s standards development community.”
“ASTP funds the ongoing development of HL7 standards like Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) and the FHIR US Core IG (US Core),” Kontur reported. Furthermore, Kontur continued, ASTP also supports HL7’s Gender Harmony Project, which guides exchanging clinical sex and gender-affirming information using HL7 standards. The Gender Harmony project addresses the common problem of health IT systems, often capturing sex and gender information in a single data element.
