ONC Releases Eighth Annual Update of ISA Reference Edition

Jan. 12, 2022

ONC announced Jan. 10 that it has updated its Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition—updates include COVID-19, laboratory, ePrescribing, and public health reporting

Janette Wider

In a Jan. 10 blog post, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced the release of its eighth annual update of the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) Reference Edition—ONC’s catalog of curated standards and implementation specifications for health information interoperability.

The blog post says that significant updates to the ISA for 2022 include:

COVID-19: ONC added Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Immunization Information System (IIS) code set standards and Health Level Seven (HL7®) IIS implementation guidance to the COVID-19 Novel Coronavirus Pandemic interoperability need. Additionally, ONC has added a more recent release of HL7 Laboratory Test Compendium Framework
Laboratory: ONC has separated the vocabulary/code set/terminology entries under Laboratory into three categories—Representing Laboratory Test Ordered, Representing Laboratory Test Performed, and Representing Laboratory Values/Results
ePrescribing: The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs’ Real-Time Prescriptions Benefit Standard Version 12 to the Content/Structure section was added
Public Health Reporting: HL7 Laboratory Results Interface implementation specification was added to Newborn Screening Results and Birth Defect Reporting to public health agencies and A Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) U.S. Laboratory Report emerging standard was added to Electronic Transmission of Reportable Laboratory Results to public health agencies

Regarding social determinants of health (SDOH) and health equity, the blog states that “PACIO Workgroup Implementation Guides and CMS Data Element Library were added to the Representing Patient Cognitive Status and Representing Patient Functional Status and/or Disability interoperability needs. Publication of the Cognitive Status and Functional Status Implementation Guides in HL7 propel health IT interoperability to better serve some of the most vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and disabled. We’ve added a new interoperability need, Work Information Templates, and populated it with HL7 Occupational Data for Health and Clinical Document Architecture implementation specifications. LOINC® codes were added to the Representing Depression and Representing Social Connection and Isolation, providing a source of applicable value sets for use.”

Further, “The Gender Harmony Project was added to Representing Patient Gender Identity to highlight the ongoing efforts by industry to represent Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity information for various clinical uses. ONC will be keenly following the project, especially as it pertains to changes desired by the industry in future versions of United States Core Data for Interoperability.”

The blog post concludes that “There are many other revisions to ISA, including re-wording of interoperability need names, updating standard/implementation specification adoption levels and replacing broken links. We’ve also populated Appendix II with additional models and profiles and updated Appendix IV with state and local public health agency interoperability program links.”