A Call To Action For A Nationwide Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure

Today we are pleased to release Connecting Health and Care for the Nation: A 10-Year Vision to Achieve an Interoperable Health IT Infrastructure.  This paper describes ONC’s broad vision and framework for interoperability and is an invitation to health IT stakeholders – clinicians, consumers, hospitals, public health, technology developers, payers, researchers, policymakers and many others – to join ONC in developing a defined, shared roadmap that will allow us to collectively achieve health IT interoperability as a core foundational element of better care, at a lower cost and better health for all.

Over the past decade, there has been dramatic progress in adoption and use of health IT across the nation.  Through deliberate policy and programmatic action, the majority of hospitals and professionals eligible for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs has adopted and are meaningfully using health IT. Across the nation, various types of health information exchange show that data can flow and be used to improve care and health.  This progress has laid a strong base upon which we can build.  There is much work to do to see that every person and their care providers can get appropriate health information in an electronic format when and how they need it to make care convenient and well-coordinated and allow for improvements in overall health.

We have heard loudly and clearly that interoperability is a national priority.  We also see that there is a tremendous opportunity to move swiftly now.  We know that consumers increasingly demand that their data flow and follow them across care settings and beyond...