ONC Unveils 10-year Plan For Healthcare Interoperability

By 2024, the national health IT infrastructure and data standards will evolve to support robust information sharing and aggregation, creating a "continuous learning" environment for care, according to an ONC paper published today.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT outlined a 10-year plan to develop an interoperable health IT ecosystem that can simultaneously improve population health, boost patient engagement and lower costs. The agency shared a set of five "critical building blocks" for achieving its goals, while also revealing its expectations for three, six and 10 years down the road.

National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo (pictured), at the Patient Privacy Rights Summit in the District of Columbia on June 4, talked about the importance of getting feedback from multiple stakeholders for the paper, published in the wake of ONC's recently announced realignment, which aims to streamline processes as federal funding dries up...