What's New on HealthIT.gov

In Today's Edition

Good morning and welcome to National Health IT Week 2014. ONC is highly engaged this year starting with the Consumer Summit and a daily edition of What’s New On Health IT.gov!

Today, we focus on consumer engagement and remind you that the Consumer Summit is being held at the Mayflower Renaissance Hotel in Washington, D.C. For those who can't attend in person, watch the live stream! Join the conversation online@ONC_HealthIT #BlueButton #NHITWeek and follow the week's planned activities atHealthIT.gov and healthitweek.org.

Consumers want online access to their health information

A new data brief that looks at consumers' access to their health information and how they used that information was posted – and released at the Consumer Summit – this morning.Check out the data brief and read the blog post by our own Vaishali Patel and Erin Siminerio. Dr. Karen DeSalvo will also be presenting some of these findings live on Monday at the 4th Annual Consumer Health IT Summit.

Blue Button Connector

You have a right to your own health data! Check out the Blue Button Connector, a tool to help consumers figure out where to get their health data. What do you do with your records you got from Blue Button Connector? Check it for errors, and Use it! Are you a health dataholder (provider, hospital, clinic, lab, etc) giving consumers electronic access to their data? Don’t see yourself listed on the Connector? Fill out this form and get listed!

New Data Segmentation Information

Patients and providers alike are concerned about the privacy and security of patients' electronic health information. That's why we sponsored the Data Segmentation for Privacy initiative (DS4P). Data segmentation technology provides patients and providers with more detailed control over patient electronic health information.

Whether you are a patient, provider, or health IT software developer, you'll want to learn more about data segmentation and the DS4P initiative. Learn more about this important project and watch the video.

Privacy Best Practices

We have also updated our model Notices of Privacy Practices page to include links to the winners of the recent Digital Privacy Notice Challenge. These winning submissions can be customized and used by providers on their existing websites, enabling them to better inform patients of their health information privacy rights.

A 2014 ONC i2 (Investing in Innovation) challenge, the Digital Privacy Notice Challengeasked designers to take the content of the paper-based model notices and produce open source digital model notices that would be visually compelling, readable, and easy for users to customize and place on their websites. The winning designs, as well as all submissions, are available online.

What are Patient-Generated Health Data (PGHD)?

PGHD include many things, such as health history, treatment history, and biometric data, to name a few. Find out more about what PGHD are, why they're important, and how they can be incorporated in a medical practice.

Blue Button Toolkit for Developers

ONC launched the Blue Button Toolkit – a new web resource dedicated to helping organizations support consumers in getting access to their digital health information. The Blue Button Toolkit provides recommended technical standards for sharing data with patients in a structured way, and marketing materials to help organizations communicate to people the value of having online access to their health records. Organizations can follow these guidelines and use these materials to show their support for the Blue Button Initiative.