Health Information Networks (HINs)

See the following -

How to Prepare for the API Requirements of the Cures Act

As of April 5, 2021, the U.S. ONC Cures Act Final Rule Compliance Timeframe is in effect. Healthcare providers, Health IT developers, Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), and Health Information Networks (HINs) will have until October 6, 2022, to provide patients with access to all their Electronic Health Information (EHI). There are several requirements that providers, developers, and exchanges must adhere to. Among them are Conditions and Maintenance of Certification requirements for Information Blocking, Communications, and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). To help you navigate this compliance timeframe, we've asked our J P System's HL7 FHIR® expert, Jay Lyle, what does one need to know about APIs and data standards. Jay has been co-chair of the HL7 Patient Care Work Group for 8 years and is an expert in HL7 data standards development and APIs.

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ONC Gets It Mostly Right with TEFCA 2.0

On April 17, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released the second draft of its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) for comment. The initial version was released more than a year ago in January 2018 (see my original blog). As before, this is in response to a requirement imposed by Congress in the 21 Century Cures Act. After a somewhat lengthy (but well written) introduction, the document contains three parts (compared to just two parts the first time around)...

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ONC Timeline for TEFCA Going Live in 2022

Today we are pleased to announce the timeline for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). The 21st Century Cures Act, signed by President Obama in 2016, calls on ONC to "develop or support a trusted exchange framework, including a common agreement among health information networks nationally."... The timeline released today-for completion of the Trusted Exchange Framework, the Common Agreement Version 1 and the Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) Technical Framework (QTF) Version 1-establishes our goal to have this new network open for participation in the first quarter (Q1) of calendar year 2022.

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The Strengths and Weaknesses of the HL7 FHIR Messaging Standard

It has been several years since we reviewed the progress of the HL7 FHIR standards adoption rate. Health Level Seven's (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is an emerging standard that has rapidly captured the mind-share of the Health Information Technology (HIT) standards community. FHIR is a standard that enables healthcare data sharing between systems in a manner that is more easily implemented and more expressive than previous HL7 standards such as HL7 Version 2, 3 and Clinical Document Architecture (CDA). Regardless of the version of HL7 standard used, the purpose of these standards is to send clinical data in messages, whether to a party inside or outside your organization. HL7 devises flexible message formats so the receiver of the message can open it up, know who sent it and why, and break it down into understandable segments and data fields.

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