Health Level Seven (HL7)

See the following -

AEGIS Announces Touchstone for HL7 FHIR Interoperability Testing

Press Release | AEGIS.net | November 12, 2015

AEGIS.net, Inc. (AEGIS)...introduces the Touchstone Project - a next generation cloud-based Testing Platform which applies Conformance and Interoperability testing in a Test-Driven-Development (TDD) integrated ecosystem.  As organizations new to the Health Level Seven® (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR®) specification begin to explore and evaluate this new HL7® standard and start projects with a goal of being an early adopter, AEGIS' Touchstone Test Platform will guide those implementations towards a high degree of conformance and interoperability in a continuous model.

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AMA-led Group Asks Feds to Redo EHR Testing Program

Joseph Conn | Modern Healthcare | January 23, 2015

The American Medical Association is calling for an overhaul of a federal program to test and certify electronic health-record systems for suitability in the EHR incentive-payment program. Its request has been joined by 34 other medical specialty societies and healthcare professional organizations. Read More »

Clinical Decision Support Strategies for Electronic Case Reporting and its Open Source Connection

A key element of public health surveillance is the reporting of infectious and certain non-infectious conditions to state, local, and tribal public health agencies (PHA) around the United States. Historically, there have been a number of key challenges with the process of case reporting that is pervasive in the United States today. To help overcome some of these barriers, an effort has been underway to move the process of case reporting to electronic. A key component of the emerging electronic care reporting (eCR) strategy is the use of clinical decision support (CDS) to help clinical care organizations determine if a reportable condition is present in a patient's record. Multiple approaches have been identified for this CDS service, including a centralized model being implemented today, and several distributed options which will likely become equally viable. Given the size, diversity, and decentralized nature of healthcare enterprises, it is likely that all three approaches for CDS discussed in this article will be deployed simultaneously.

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HIMSS14: HL7 International and AEGIS.net, Inc. Partner to Launch HL7 Conformance Testing Program

Press Release | HL7 International , AEGIS | February 18, 2014

Health Level Seven® (HL7®) International and AEGIS.net (AEGIS) today announced the launch of a new Conformance Testing Program for HL7 standards. The HL7 Conformance Testing Program provides a platform for ongoing, iterative testing that helps healthcare IT developers get highly interoperable products to market quickly and cost-effectively. The testing program will make interoperability more cost-effective for vendors as well as implementers by reducing interface development time and costs.
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Keeping Everyone in the Know: New CMS ADT Rule

On March 9, 2020, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued the Interoperability and Patient Access Final Rule aimed at enhancing interoperability and increasing patient access to health information. This Final Rule contains a new Condition of Participation (CoP) that requires all hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and Critical Access Hospitals to electronically share (via an electronic health record [EHR] or another electronic administrative system) event notifications (also referred as e-notifications) with other providers across the continuum of care. These event notifications should occur whenever patients have an emergency department (ED) or inpatient admission, discharges, or transfers (also known as ADTs) in community hospitals.

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Major Interoperability Initiative Launched During the Annual Meeting of The Sequoia Project

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 »

Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce Issue Joint Statement Making Commitment to Open Source Healthcare Interoperability

Josh Mandel | Microsoft Industry Blog | August 13, 2018

Interoperability is an overlapping set of technical and policy challenges, from data access to common data models to information exchange to workflow integration – and these challenges often pose a barrier to healthcare innovation. Microsoft has been engaged for many years on developing best practices for interoperability across industries. Today, as health IT community leaders get together at the CMS Blue Button 2.0 Developer Conference here in Washington, DC, we’re pleased to announce that Microsoft has joined with Amazon, Google, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce in support of healthcare interoperability...

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ONC Releases Beta Scorecard for C-CDA Documents

Greg Slabodkin | Health Data Management | July 20, 2016

A new tool released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is being offered to providers and developers to help them identify and resolve interoperability issues involving Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) documents in their HIT systems. Read More »

ONC Timeline for TEFCA Going Live in 2022

Today we are pleased to announce the timeline for the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA). The 21st Century Cures Act, signed by President Obama in 2016, calls on ONC to "develop or support a trusted exchange framework, including a common agreement among health information networks nationally."... The timeline released today-for completion of the Trusted Exchange Framework, the Common Agreement Version 1 and the Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) Technical Framework (QTF) Version 1-establishes our goal to have this new network open for participation in the first quarter (Q1) of calendar year 2022.

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Open Source Solutions For Public Health Case Reporting and COVID-19

The United States is continuing its slow emergence from a nation-wide shut down imposed to slow down the spread of COVID-19. Most states have started to reopen, with bars, restaurants, and many workplaces starting to fill. As people begin to spend more time together again, it is critically important that public health agencies do everything they can to help prevent further spread of the infection and continue to monitor the level of infection within the population. Data is an important tool that public health has to understand what is going on in the country. Years of limited government investment and neglect of current systems has limited public health's ability to meet the challenges of managing both localized outbreaks and pandemics.

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Pharmaceutical And IT Communities Collaborate On OASIS Clinical Trial Data Standard For Content Management Systems

Press Release | OASIS | March 20, 2014

The pharmaceutical community, health care organizations, and software providers are coming together at the OASIS open standards consortium to define a machine-readable content classification standard for the interoperable exchange of clinical trial data via content management systems. The work of the new OASIS Electronic Trial Master File (eTMF) Standard Technical Committee will promote interoperability across diverse computing platforms and cloud networks within the clinical trials community.

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Test Highlights: How To Do EHR Data Sharing Right

Mary Mosquera | Healthcare IT News | September 19, 2012

The Department Veterans Affairs  and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have demonstrated how to securely share sensitive health information via electronic health records  (EHRs). Read More »

The Evolving Landscape of Health Information Exchange

The original vision for nationwide health information exchange was a “network of networks” model where local HIEs would interact HIE-to-HIE to form a virtual national network. But notice that many of the new initiatives are essentially solving a different problem: they are enabling point-to-point connections across a wider geography and set of clinical sites. This seems more like a large, single national network rather than leverage of more distributed organizations or implementations. Only time will tell if these private sector initiatives will collaborate, converge or compete. And only time will tell of the limitations of ONC’s ability to influence and provide leadership will creates gaps or provide new opportunities for innovation.

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VA & SAMHSA test Exchange of Tagged Substance Abuse Data

Mary Mosquera | Government Health IT | September 18, 2012

The Veterans Affairs Department and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration have demonstrated how to securely share sensitive health information while following confidentiality laws and patient disclosure wishes among providers using certified electronic health records (EHRs). Read More »

VA Wants Advanced Clinical Decision Support for iEHR

Mary Mosquera | GovernmentHealthIT | July 3, 2012

The Veterans Affairs Department wants industry help to describe standard technical specifications for services that are needed for clinical decision support that could be incorporated in its integrated electronic health record (iEHR) with the Defense Department. Read More »