New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue

April's Fools Day came and went with nary a peep from us at ONC. But we have a number of treats you can find on HealthIT.gov. Check them out!

Draft FDASIA Report issued

ONC, along with the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Communications Commission, released a draft report that includes a proposed strategy and recommendations for a risk-based framework as required by the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act of 2012 (FDASIA). You can take a look at the HHS news release announcing the report and the report itself on HealthIT.gov.

Transforming Rural Veterans' Care with Health IT

You can read about the "Veteran Initiated Electronic Care Coordination" project in a recent joint blog post by Leila Samy (@LeilaSamy) and Gina Capra of the Department of Veterans Affairs. "This project helps rural Veterans use Blue Button technology to access their health information stored in the VA’s system and then transmit key pieces of their own health information, such as medication lists and laboratory results, to their local rural health care providers." And Brett Coughlin writes about a pilot program in Florida, Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota that is using Blue Button technology to help veterans access their health information.

Updates to Hospital Clinical Quality Measure Specs

Last week we introduced you to a new testing tool for electronic clinical quality measures (eCQMs) called BONNIE that would be released this week. Take a minute to read Kevin Larsen's blog post and learn more about the updated eCQMs and BONNIE.

He also reminds readers about the two training programs that will be held nextWednesday, April 7. To register for 10 -11 am EDT session, visit https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/521285847 or visit https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/129588895 for the 2 -3 p.m. EDT session.

News about CONNECT

This week, the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) announced its support for the migration of CONNECT's governance and code management to Open Health Tools (OHT). CONNECT is an open source software solution that supports health information exchange at both the local and national level.

OHT is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization that governs open source communities and provides a framework for individuals, vendors, and government to collaborate on health IT projects. FHA will be engaged with OHT's CONNECT community and will continue to develop versions of CONNECT to ensure that federal requirements are met. For more information about CONNECT, visit the CONNECT Community Wiki atwiki.connectopensource.org.

Call for Papers on Community-Based Health IT Initiatives

April 18th is the deadline for the submission of papers on lessons learned from efforts that drive improvement in health care and reduce costs using health IT. With support from the Commonwealth Fund, AcademyHealth's Beacon Evidence and Innovation Network, is sponsoring a special issue of eGEMs to capture insights so that others can learn from their experiences. eGEMS is a free, open access, peer-reviewed journal produced by the Electronic Data Methods Forum that shares innovative approaches to using electronic data for health research and quality improvement. . Read more & submit.