In August 2022 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) launched the 2022 Public Health Data Systems Task Force as a subcommittee of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC). The task force will meet through the beginning of November to present recommendations continuing and building upon the work of the 2021 task force. Members of the task force include individuals from various levels of government, relevant public health associations, and industry partners. Specifically, the task force is focused on the certification criteria for EHR products certified under the ONC Health IT Certification Program that cover transmission of data from EHRs to public health in these domains...
American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA)
See the following -
AIRA 2018: Is Open Source the Key to Immunization Software Sustainability?
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | August 21, 2018
On August 14-16, 2018 the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) held its 2018 National Meeting. This meeting brought together more than 350 informatics professionals, public health officials, EHR vendors, and other stakeholders who all care passionately about Immunization Information Systems (IIS) and their role in the healthcare community. IIS projects leverage interoperability with EHRs, PHRs, and other systems to promote clinical practice at the point of care; enable public health surveillance, and reduce cost by assisting in preventing both under and over immunization.
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CMS Promoting Interoperability Program: A Public Health Perspective
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | September 6, 2018
Well, here we go again. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has now released a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), titled Medicare Program; Revisions to Payment Policies under the Physician Fee Schedule and Other Revisions to Part B for CY 2019; Medicare Shared Savings Program Requirements; Quality Payment Program; and Medicaid Promoting Interoperability Program...As this NPRM was released, the CMS Administrator, Seema Verma, published an open letter to doctors which is focused on reducing the burden on doctors so they can spend more time with physicians. HL7 has begun a similar initiative on reducing clinical burden. So the key question is: Does this NPRM go far enough to reduce provider burden in the spirit of Dr. Verma's letter?
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Feature Overlaps Between Immunization Information Systems and EHRs
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | May 15, 2018
Immunization Information Systems (IIS) have been around for nearly twenty years. Their functionality, completeness, and usefulness have all increased over this time. IIS and electronic health record (EHR) systems have always had unique features, as well as some overlapping features, and the deployment of EHRs has enhanced the local immunization capabilities of clinician practices. Several critical clinical features that are considered to be core functions of IIS are beginning to be supported by EHRs. This article will review and discuss five such critical features: online data entry, clinical decision support for immunization, reminder-recall, practice-level assessment of up-to-date status, and patient access to their immunization data.
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How are Clinical Decision Support Artifacts Tested Today?
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | December 4, 2018
In October 2018 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a Request for Information (RFI) for a Natural Test Collaborative (NTC). Through a series of questions, the RFI seeks opinions and information about "The development of a national testbed (notionally called the National Test Collaborative (NTC)) for real-world testing of health information technology (IT)" and "Approaches for creating a sustainable infrastructure" to achieve it. The scope of this RFI is daunting. It might be useful, rather than to try to tackle this whole topic broadly but superficially, to take just one Clinical Decision Support (CDS) domain and show as completely as possible how testing is currently done.
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Major Interoperability Initiative Launched During the Annual Meeting of The Sequoia Project
By Michael J. Suralik | December 20, 2019
On December 5, 2019, HLN Consulting, LLC participated in The Sequoia Project's day long annual meeting which was held just outside of Washington, D.C. at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. As a leading healthcare informatics consulting company HLN monitors developments in healthcare interoperability nationally with particular emphasis on the impact to public health agencies and their stakeholders. This conference represented a good opportunity to participate in the start of a major interoperability initiative that will play out over the next several years. In addition to this report, the Sequoia Project posted the proceedings of the meeting online, including the recorded discussions as well as the slides from the presentations. Read More »
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Major Upgrade to Innovative Open Source Immunization Forecaster Released
Press Release |
HLN Consulting |
August 12, 2018
Innovative open source software, originally developed for public health, is freely available to EHR and PHR systems to support clinical decision support for immunizations...ICE is a state-of-the-art open-source software system that provides clinical decision support for immunizations for use in Immunization Information Systems (IIS), Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Personal Health Record (PHR) Systems...HLN will be presenting this new version this week at the annual meeting of the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) and week of August 20 at the CDC Public Health Informatics Conference Read More »
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ONC EHR Reporting Program RFI: A Public Health Perspective
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | September 12, 2018
On August 24, 2018, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) released a Request for Information (RFI) related to the EHR Reporting Program. This RFI is required by the 21st Century Cures Act and its primary purpose is to gather ideas and suggestions related to how ONC might provide better information about Certified EHR Technology (CEHRT). Apparently, the initial intention was to create a "star rating" like the type used in Consumer Reports to use to rate EHRs, but that seems to have been abandoned in favor of some kind of measurement system. But it is far from clear exactly how this would be done.
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ONC HITAC Public Health Data Systems Task Force Releases Recommendations
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | November 18, 2022
On November 10, 2022 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) accepted and approved the recommendations of its ad hoc Public Health Data Systems Task Force. As discussed in an earlier post, the Task Force has been meeting since August 2022 and was charged with examining how improvements might be made in ONC certification rules for criteria related to public health data submission. In addition, and perhaps for the first time, the task force was also charged with developing recommendations related to the public health side of the equation: how public health data systems and/or standards might improve to ensure a smoother flow of information with clinical care. Read More »
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ONC Launches Public Health Data Systems Task Force
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | September 18, 2022
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ONC's 3rd Interoperability Forum: Not Much to Report
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | August 26, 2019
On August 21 and 22, 2019 the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) held its third Interoperability Forum in Washington, DC. More than 600 individuals participated in person with many others viewing the general sessions via webinar. The conference began and ended with half-day plenary sessions while providing five tracks with smaller sessions in between. I attended the Health Information Exchange (HIE)/Community-based Information Exchange (CIE) breakout session on both days. The plenaries...focused on the current state and the future state of interoperability.
The Reduction of State-coordinated HIE: How Should Public Health React?
By Noam H. Arzt, Ph.D. | August 2, 2016
Noam ArztA recent article in HealthAffairs describes a significant decline in the number of both operational HIEs and HIEs in the planning stage from several years earlier. The authors note continuing barriers to broad-based HIE and a shift to vendor-driven exchange which diminishes the effectiveness of community-based networks. In effect, this translates to a shift away from geographic-based/dominated HIEs to product-dominated HIEs. We have already noted (see The Interoperability of Things) the lack of a national strategy on HIE, and ONC’s Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap barely mentions the concept.
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AIRA 2018 National Meeting
At the American Immunization Registry Association (AIRA) 2018 National Meeting, we will continue to work toward our common goal of supporting and promoting the development, implementation and interoperability of Immunization Information Systems (IIS). Through formal presentations and informal discussions, attendees will have an opportunity to strengthen long-term partnerships, develop new relationships, gain professional education and training, and learn from one another.
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