The Sequoia Project’s CIO/CTO, Eric Heflin, has been appointed to the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee’s (HITAC) U.S. Core Data for Interoperability Task Force (USCDI).
Establish by the 21st Century Cures Act, the HITAC and its taskforces inform the work of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) by making policy, standards, and implementation specification recommendations for local and national health information access and exchange. The committee’s first meeting is slated for Feb. 21.
The Sequoia Project, chartered in 2012, has the goal to advance the implementation of secure, interoperable nationwide health information exchange. It supports multiple, independent health IT interoperability initiatives, most notably: the eHealth Exchange, the oldest, national public-private health data sharing network that includes four federal agencies, 75 percent of U.S. hospitals and 47 regional and state health information exchanges; and Carequality, an interoperability framework for trusted exchange among existing data sharing networks covering more than 600,000 physicians.
Prior to the Cures Act and HITAC, ONC was advised by both the Health Information Technology Policy Committee and the Health Information Standards Committee, the latter of which Heflin was an active member. The new USCDI Taskforce will provide recommendation and feedback on the USCDI structure and processes, such as classes, categorization, objective characteristics for promotion, and expansion plans, officials have noted.
“The Sequoia Project is honored to support ONC, from providing subject matter expertise to supporting the goals of the draft trusted framework proposed this winter,” Heflin said in a statement.
In addition to Heflin’s appointment to the USCDI, The Sequoia Project’s experience is also represented on the HITAC by board of director members John Kansky, of Indiana Health Information Exchange (HIE), and Steven Lane, M.D., of Sutter Health.
The two co-chairs of USCDI are Christina Caraballo, director of healthcare transformation at health technology company Get Real Health, and Terrence O’Malley, M.D., a geriatrician at Massachusetts General Hospital.
