Following up on its 10-year interoperability vision laid out in June, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) has launched a new, interactive community designed to elicit public input on the roadmap.
According to a blog post from national coordinator for health IT Karen DeSalvo, M.D., and Erica Galvez, ONC’s interoperability and exchange portfolio manager, over the course of the coming months the agency will be drafting a document with input from stakeholders who may be interested in contributing.
“The goal is to develop version 1.0 of a nationwide interoperability roadmap,” DeSalvo and Galvez said in the blog post from last week. “The roadmap will be a companion to our vision paper and dive deeper on how we can collectively achieve the 3, 6, and 10 year interoperability milestones described in the paper. Our ultimate goal is to have a learning health system where accurate and evidence-based information helps ensure the right individual receives the right care at the right time to increase health care quality, lower healthcare costs and improve population health.”
The interoperability community is intended to give everyone an opportunity to provide input on the most critical elements of the roadmap, allows for comments and feedback, and includes specific questions that need to be addressed, according to the agency. Thoughts and comments are due by September 12, with an updated version reflecting the Advisory Committee feedback to be posted for public comment in early 2015, it said.
“We expect the roadmap to be a living document updated with collective input on a regular basis. We know we won’t get everything right the first time around, but also know that achieving interoperability in health IT is a journey, not a destination,” the blog post said.
