ONC's 5 Goals For The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT on Wednesday shared more detail about its vision for the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020 it laid down last week.  This latest installment of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan comes after what national coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, called “great success in achieving what was laid out in that original plan.”  DeSalvo pointed specifically to the 90 percent of hospitals and 60 percent of doctors currently using electronic health records and added that a multitude of new interest is coming to the fore among consumers, doctors, insurance companies, researchers, scientists.

“There’s data to be shared,” DeSalvo said. “The increasing demand is for it to be even more liquid.”  Which is why the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan draft, open for comments until Feb. 6, 2015, essentially serves as companion piece to the 10-Year roadmap to interoperability ONC is developing in near lockstep.  Seth Pazinski, director of ONC’s office of planning, evaluation and analysis, on Wednesday laid down ONC’s fistful of stated goals for the strategic plan.

1. Expand adoption of health IT. This includes increasing adoption, effective use of IT products and services, as well as increasing user and market confidence and “advancing a national communications infrastructure that supports health, safety, and care delivery.”

2. Advance secure and interoperable health information. ONC intends to achieve this goal by enabling individuals, providers, and public health entities to not only exchange but also use health data. It will require identifying, prioritizing and advancing technical standards for exchange and data privacy....