The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has begun conversations with the Health Information Technology Policy and Standards Committees as part of ONC’s broad vision to develop a defined, shared roadmap that allows for collective achievement of health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of a learning health system.
In June 2014, the ONC released the high-level document, Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure, which acted as an invitation to health IT stakeholders to join in the early stages of the development of a shared roadmap. The active engagement in meetings and through the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap Community Home of these stakeholders, which include clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policy makers and many others has helped the ONC develop five critical building blocks for a nationwide interoperable health IT infrastructure:
1. Core technical standards and functions
2. Certification to support adoption and optimization of health IT products and services
3. Privacy and security protections for health information
4. Supportive business, clinical, and regulatory environments
5. Rules of engagement and governance
Within the five building blocks, the ONC is proposing key near-term actions and milestones for many of the 3, 6, and 10 year goals. In the updated 10-year interoperability roadmap draft, the ONC highlighted the following goals over the next 10 years:
• By 2017, providers will be able to send, receive, find and use a basic set of essential health information.
• By 2020, granular health information will be accessible to providers. There will be more sources and users of that health information, and healthcare quality will improve, while costs decrease.
• By 2024, the ONC expects to have broad access to longitudinal information; reduced time from information evidence to practice; ubiquitous precision medicine; and virtuous learning cycle.
Interoperability has been clearly identified as a national priority, and the ONC hopes to receive feedback from stakeholders at every checkpoint during the development of the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap.
As the Illinois Framework for Healthcare and Human Services works to advance interoperability in Illinois, resources like the federal roadmap will prove to be integral drivers in coordinating shared technology and data across healthcare and human service programs.
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