Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR)

See the following -

Halamka's Health IT Observations from Japan and New Zealand

This week I’ve taken vacation time to help my colleagues in Japan and New Zealand with national IT planning. As I often say, the healthcare IT challenges are the same all over the world, but the cultural context is different. In Japan, I spent 2 days in Tokyo and 1 day in Kyoto, lecturing, meeting, and listening to stakeholders. There is a great desire to share data for care coordination and clinical trials/clinical research. Telemedicine/telehealth is increasingly important in an aging Japanese society that has increasing healthcare needs but a limited number of caregivers and few opportunities to increase healthcare budgets. Here are a few of the current issues we discussed...

Halamka's Notes on the December HIT Standards Committee Meeting

The December HIT Standards Committee included a review of the draft Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, recommendations about identity management from the Transport and Security Workgroup, an overview of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, and a discussion of upcoming task force work as we all prepare for the publication of the ONC interoperability roadmap and the Meaningful Use Stage 3 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

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Halamka's Report on The April 2015 HIT Standards Committee Meeting

The April 2015 HITSC meeting focused on the Certification Rule NPRM and a comprehensive review of the Federal Interoperability Roadmap. I suggested that a guiding principle for the committee’s work is to emphasize the enablers in the proposals while reducing those aspects that create substantial burden/slow innovation.   As a federal advisory committee our job is to temper regulatory ambition with operational reality.

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Halamka's Report on the June 2015 HIT Standards Committee

The June 2015 HIT Standards Committee focused on celebrating the accomplishments of those individuals who have reached their federal advisory committee term limits.  Most served 6 years...Karen DeSalvo thanked each one and I offered comments about their unique contributions, changing the fundamental trajectory of standards in the US from a 1990’s “EDI” payload model to a 2015 “Facebook” Application Program Interface model.   Their leadership has brought modern, open web standards to the healthcare domain, specified controlled vocabularies, and established appropriate security. They will be missed.

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Health IT Security, FHIR Focus of ONC Secure API Server Challenge

Elizabeth Snell | HealthIT Security | October 10, 2017

ONC is challenging healthcare stakeholders to build secure Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) servers to improve health IT security and ensure that secure FHIR options are available in the future. The Secure API Server Showdown Challenge will ideally “identify unknown security vulnerabilities in the way open source FHIR servers are implemented,” ONC Office of Standards and Technology Director Steven Posnack, MS, MHS, wrote in a blog post...

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HHS Announces the Move Health Data Forward Phase 2 Challenge Winners

Press Release | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services | February 21, 2017

The Department of Health and Humans Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced the Phase 2 winners of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge. Winning submissions will now move on to the challenge’s last phase to develop applications that will allow individuals to share their personal health information safely and securely with their health care providers, family members or other caregivers...

HHS Announces the Move Health Data Forward Phase 3 Challenge Winners

Press Release | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) | May 31, 2017

As part of its ongoing efforts to support the interoperable flow of health information, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced the Phase 3 – and final – winners of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge. The multi-phase challenge focused on the development of applications allowing individuals to share their personal health information safely and securely with their health care providers, family members or other caregivers...

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HHS announces the Move Health Data Forward Phase 3 challenge winners

Press Release | U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) | May 31, 2017

As part of its ongoing efforts to support the interoperable flow of health information, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced the Phase 3 – and final – winners of the Move Health Data Forward Challenge. The multi-phase challenge focused on the development of applications allowing individuals to share their personal health information safely and securely with their health care providers, family members or other caregivers...

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HHS Launches Cash Contest for Innovative FHIR Apps

Press Release | Department of Health and Human Services | March 1, 2016

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced today a three-part strategy to spur the development of market-ready, user-friendly software applications (apps) for consumers and health care providers...The strategy includes two software app challenges with award prizes totaling $175,000 each: one focused on consumer use and one focused on provider use. Additionally, a competitive funding opportunity of up to $275,000 will support the development of an open resource to make it easier for developers to publish their apps and for providers to discover and compare them...

HL7 Chief Charles Jaffe to Update on FHIR Argonaut Project Progress at HIMSS16

Chris Hayden | Healthcare IT News | February 5, 2016

More than a year after its implementation, Charles Jaffe, MD, CEO of HL7, is scheduled to return to the HIMSS Annual Conference to update the industry on the accomplishments to date and shed light on developments coming in the near future. HL7 launched the Argonaut Project in collaboration with healthcare IT vendors and providers to accelerate the adoption of Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources and, according to Jaffe, there are several exciting developments to discuss...

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HL7 Launches Joint Argonaut Project to Advance FHIR

Press Release | Health Level Seven International (HL7) | December 4, 2014

Leading Health IT industry vendors and providers collaborate with HL7 to accelerate development and adoption of FHIR Read More »

How OpenMRS is Used to Fight Malaria in Endemic Areas

Children receiving care at a health clinic using OpenMRS in rural Uganda. Statistics from the Ministry of Health show that malaria is still the leading cause of death in Uganda, accounting for over 27% of deaths. OpenMRS is an electronic medical record platform designed to be used in low-resource environments where malaria and many other deadly diseases are endemic such as Uganda, where malaria is the primary cause of death in children. OpenMRS is currently used in over 1,800 medical clinics in 64 countries, providing the health information technology infrastructure that is foundational to over 6.3 million patients...

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In-Depth: All the News from the Connected Health Conference 2016

Staff Writer | Mobi Health News | December 16, 2016

This week, the Connected Health Conference in National Harbor, Maryland brought together stakeholders and thought leaders in digital and connected health. MobiHealthNews covered the two-day event this week -- links to our coverage from Monday and Tuesday are at the bottom of this roundup... In a panel moderated by Dr. Joe Kvedar, the VP of Connected Health at Partner’s Healthcare, Alden Doerner Rinaldi, medical director at Mount Auburn Hospital and Ronan Wisdom, global lead for connected health at Accenture, talked about how the role of digital tools is changing in healthcare...

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John Halamka Looks Back at 2014

2014 was quite a year. Thinking back to December 2013, I cannot believe that so much has happened. Let’s take a look at the major HIT events that shaped 2014 and what they portend for 2015 Read More »

Keeping Everyone in the Know: New CMS ADT Rule

On March 9, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule aimed at enhancing interoperability and increasing patient access to health information. This Final Rule contains a new Condition of Participation (CoP) that requires all hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and Critical Access Hospitals to electronically share (via an electronic health record [EHR] or another electronic administrative system) event notifications (also referred as e-notifications) with other providers across the continuum of care. These event notifications should occur whenever patients have an emergency department (ED) or inpatient admission, discharges, or transfers (also known as ADTs) in community hospitals.

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