New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue:

ICYMI, the ONC Annual Meeting is ending here in D.C. and everyone is still trying to figure out what to do with all the snow. In case you were unable to get to town, watch the web video (be patient, it will be posted soon)!

ONC WEST Health Summit

Next up, on Feb. 6, is the ONC West Health Interoperability Summit, also here in D.C. (maybe the city will thaw out by then, but don’t bet on it!) Sign up now!

Memorandum of Understanding: Health information technology use in the United States and the United Kingdom

One of the highlights of the Annual Meeting was an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom to share health data. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the United Kingdom's Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, via a web link, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to: share quality indicators, "liberate" data, adopt electronic health records and expand the health IT market.

Blue Button Developers Forum videos

Newly available Blue Button videos were shot during our Division of Science and Innovation's Blue Button Plus Developer Forums in San Francisco and New York City last year. These workshops engaged the developer community around the technical standards and implementation of Blue Button +, which enable third-party applications to securely download a patient's Blue Button data. The series of videos includes panels of early adopters discussing their experiences, in-depth tutorials, and views from patients.

Implementation Resources Repository

Your one-stop shop for implementation resources is now available! Visit theHealthIT.gov Implementation Resources Repository to find all the tools you need to achieve your implementation goals. You can find, filter and rate resources all in one place on HealthIT.gov. Check out the repository or read more about in our blog post! We also want to hear how helpful these resources are for you, so we have posted additional tools so you can rate them.

To view more information on implementing EHRs, visit the EHR implementation lifecycle steps.

Spotlight on Kids: Beacon Issue Brief & blog

Are you curious about how innovative health IT tools can help improve children’s health in your community? Check out a new issue brief released by AcademyHealth and thenew blog post authored by Dr. Barbara Yawn of the Southeast Minnesota Beacon Community. Dr. Yawn highlighted how Beacon Communities have invested in health IT to address health challenges faced by kids, their families and pediatric care team members. The issue brief describes strategies and lessons learned by Beacon Communities that can be readily applied to other communities across the country. These include:

Asthma action plans shared by schools, nurses, pediatricians, public health and families;
Automated admission discharge transfer alerts for ED visits made by pediatric asthma patients;
Text message immunization reminders for parents; and
Customized EHR modules for pediatric populations.

State Health Information Exchange Program

Interested in on-the-ground progress in State Health Information Exchange? Check out the newest HIE updates on healthit.gov for helpful resources and ONC initiatives; information on ONC’s State HIE grantees in the 56 states, territories, and the District of Columbia; and the State HIE Program Measures Dashboard which monitors grantees’ Directed and query-based exchange implementations. And to learn more about how communities around the country are impacting patient health through HIE, take a look atState HIE Bright Spots covering progress in e-prescribing, lab exchange, rural health, care coordination, Direct secure messaging, and many more.

2014 MUS2 Transitions of Care Connect-a-thon

Are you an Eligible Provider or Eligible Hospital working to achieve Meaningful Use Stage 2 transitions of care (TOC) requirements? We're hosting a Connect-a-thon that will engage EHR vendors and HISPs in end-to-end interoperability testing of CCDA care summary exchange at the 2014 Meaningful Use (MU) Stage 2 Transitions of Care Connect-a-thon on February 4 & 5 at Alexandria, VA's Embassy Suites.

If you are a technologist from an EHR vendor or HISP working on CCDA care summary exchange via Direct or you plan to support MU Stage 2 or deploy products certified to the 2014 edition HIT certification, you should join us for this event. The Connect-a-thon will build on earlier sessions designed to further MU Stage 2 exchange by accelerating testing and troubleshooting across platforms that use Direct specifications to exchange CCDA documents.

For additional information, please contact Thad Flood.

Making HealthIT safer

Coming up next week (January 30 at 3:00pm-4:30pm EST) is a webinar about health IT and patient safety. We will focus on our new Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides. The presenters include Joan Ash, Hardeep Singh, and Dean Sittig – the health IT safety researchers and informatics experts who led the SAFER Guides development. Sign up now!