New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue

School and health IT, how do they go together, exactly? Here's how: As National Immunization Awareness Month comes to an end and the kids head back to the classroom, we've got a couple of resources you might want to read about that will help doctors, parents, and even those wayward college students electronically track vaccination records. More on those below.

And don't forget National Health IT Week begins Sept. 15, with lots of activities planned. See below for more details.

Health IT Week Updates

National Health IT Week kicks off with the Consumer Summit on Monday. Registration is still open, but seats are filling up.

Thursday, we're hosting a webinar to look at advancing interoperability through standards. Jodi Daniel will moderate a discussion at 3 pm EDT on ONC's previous and future governance activities. Registration has just opened, so check it out and sign up.

Finally, we're wrapping up the week on Friday, Sept. 19 at 1 pm EDT with a webinar on the progress made and challenges ahead in using health IT to promote patient safety. ONC’s Amy Helwig, M.D. will moderate the webinar and speakers will include: Zia Hydari of Carnegie Mellon University, Karen Zimmer from ECRI, and Tammy Williams from UHC Safety Intelligence. Sign up now!

Immunization Records and Health IT

To close out National Immunization Awareness Month (yes, it was August), ONC staff ramped it up, penning a pair of blog posts and holding a webinar to explain how health IT can help parents and school nurses track vaccination records via immunization information systems, making the back-to-school experience a little easier. The webinar slides are available if you want to learn more! We are also leveraging the Blue Button initiative to partner with five states to pilot new ways to share these data with providers, consumers and parents.

Federal Advisory Committee Workgroups Want Your Input

At the Sept. 3rd Health IT Policy Committee (HITPC) meeting the JASON Task Force and the Governance Subgroup of the Interoperability and Health Information Exchange Workgroup will be providing updates on their work. The Governance Subgroup of the HITPC is tasked with identifying the substance, scope, and process ONC should use to implement a governance approach for interoperability and health information exchange. This approach is to establish "rules of the road" needed for information to flow efficiently across networks. The JASON Task Force, a joint group of the HITPC and Health IT Standards Committee, is tasked with providing feedback to ONC on the JASON report.

We invite you to listen in and participate in the discussion by providing comments during the public comment period. Attend in person or virtually and check out the agenda, slides, and webcast information, which will be posted before the meeting. You can also share your thoughts with the JASON Task Force and the Governance Subgroup during their upcoming meetings in September.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of Sept. 1 (all times EDT)

Tuesday
The JASON Task Force meets @ 11am. Take a look at the agenda, meeting slides, and dial-in info if you are interested.

Wednesday
The aforementioned Health IT Policy Committee (#HITPC) meeting kicks off @ 9:30am and runs until 2:30pm. More meeting details will be posted next week.

Thursday
The Nationwide Health Information Network Power Team meets @ 3:30pm. Details will be added to the webpage as they become available!

Bonnie v1.2 Update

Attention developers and EHR vendors! The Bonnie eClinical Quality Measure (eCQM) Testing Tool has been updated.

Sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and ONC, Bonnie is a tool for testing electronic clinical quality measures designed to support streamlined and efficient pre-testing of eCQMs, particularly those used in the meaningful use program. This tool is designed for use by measure developers and allows for the evaluation of the performance of eCQMs during the test-driven development process.

For those of you who understand the tech speak - the new version includes a compact visualization of measure logic and allows for a compact view of test coverage. Bonnie v1.2 also introduces a high level display of synthetic test patient calculation against measure logic. The latest version also improves the measure import infrastructure for the Measure Authoring Tool (MAT) SimpleXML and HQMF R2.1.

Draft Quality Measure Open For Comment

The draft electronic Quality Measure "Hepatitis B Vaccine Coverage Among All Live Newborn Infants Prior to Hospital or Birthing Facility Discharge" has been updated and re-posted for public comment.

To access and comment on the draft measure, select the "Draft Measures" tab in USHIK (United States Health Informtion Knowledge) and select the individual measure on which you want to comment. Users must authenticate to UMLS using their free UTS account credentials. To submit feedback on a draft measure, select "Provide Feedback" on the measure's page, fill out the form and submit it directly at "Comments on eCQMs under development". All feedback is sent to the measure developers, stewards, CMS, and ONC for review.

Resource Repository Revamp

Your one-stop shop for implementation resources just got a redesign!

The new card layout of the HealthIT.gov Implementation Resources Repository lets you see more about the tool before you decide to download. You can also sort resources in the repository by:

Posting Date
Title
Total Votes

Take a look! Don’t forget to help other users by rating the tools you like and the ones you don't.

Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap

Let your voice be heard! Don't forget to share your experience and expertise on achieving an interoperable health IT infrastructure. Comment on the wiki.