ONC Expanding Blue Button Capabilities

The Blue Button initiative has already let more than one-million veterans and active-duty troops download their personal health records. But the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information (ONC) has a larger audience in mind.

"What we want to do is to allow people using other than just the VA and DoD systems the ability to download information that can be kept in a discreet manner so it can interact with personal health records in other systems," said David Muntz, principal deputy national coordinator at the ONC, and this week's guest on Agency of the Month.

This builds off the success of other agencies, like the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in providing electronic health records to civilian federal employees. When the ONC manages to make Blue Button compatible for multiple systems, the potential for EHR distribution is nationwide...