New This Week on HealthIT.gov

In This Issue

Attention developers! This weekend is the deadline for the Hypertension Control Challengeand we are announcing a new Code-a-thon in beautiful downtown Minneapolis, so mark your calendars! We are also holding an in-person meeting in D.C. to talk about developing an integrated, person-centered plan enabled through health IT, so lots of good stuff coming up.

Public Workshop: Integrating Plans for Long Term Service and Supports and Health Care Delivery through Health IT

We and the Administration for Community Living are convening a town-hall style public workshop entitled Putting the Person at the Center: Integrating Plans for Long-Term Services and Supports and Health Care Delivery through Health Information Technologyon Thursday, October 16th, 2014 from 9am to 4:15pm EDT in Washington, D.C. This workshop will discuss developing an integrated, person-centered plan enabled by health IT, including how to improve communication and collaboration among community-based organizations and health care partners. Learn more and register now for the workshop.

Get Listed on the Blue Button Connector

Many of you already are – or have plans to – start giving consumers online access to their health information – particularly as Meaningful Use Stage 2 (#MUS2) kicks into gear. ONC has created an opportunity for you to create more visibility and consumer awareness about your online offerings via the Blue Button Connector website. The Blue Button Connector was recently launched at the 4th Annual Consumer Health IT Summit and it was born out of a need for consumers to have a single place to get started in navigating where to access their personal health information online. Add your organization now.

Hypertension Control Challenge

This weekend is the last chance for providers to work on their submissions to the EHR Innovations for Improving Hypertension Challenge! Phase 1 submissions are due at 11:59 pm EDT, Monday, October 6, and will be reviewed by a panel of experts including Dr. Teresa Cullen (Department of Veterans Affairs), Dr. Jon White (Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality), and Dr. Janet Wright (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Million Hearts Initiative); visit the website to see the full panel. Winners will be announced in the last week of October, marking the beginning of Phase 2, in which we'll look to participants (Phase 1 and new) to spread the best hypertension interventions to new practices and providers.

Google + Hangout

ONC's next Innovation Engagement Google Hangout is on October 7 at 2pm EDT, featuring a discussion between David Hale of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and Mark Silverberg from Social Health Insights on Pillbox, an NLM project to aid in the identification of unknown pills. This resource combines images of pills with appearance and other information so users can search for and visually identify oral solid dosage form medications. NLM created and released open source code for Pillbox to make this data easily accessible and usable by the developer community. Available on Github, Pillbox is a collection of Python scripts that download the SPL data files, process the data files along with other data sources to create a "pill-focused" view of the information and provide the data into formats that can be easily used by APIs. Pillbox is available as an API or developers can download and incorporate the scripts into their own applications. Join us on Oct. 7 to learn more about Pillbox and how you can get involved!

Medication Management Code-a-thon

In collaboration with Treehouse Health, we are excited to announce the Medication Management Code-a-thon, set to take place in Minneapolis, October 24 –26. This is a great opportunity for developers, patients, designers, and providers to work together to generate new ideas and code using open data like openFDA and the National Library of Medicine's Pillbox (see above for more on Pillbox). The weekend-long event will be a chance for participants to break out of their silos and explore new concepts. Many problems associated with medication management and prescription drugs remain unsolved, and we look forward to seeing what new approaches bubble up!

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of Oct. 6

WednesdayAt 9am (all times Eastern) the Jason Task Force meets. Check out this link for agenda, meeting slides and dial-in info.

Then, at 3pm, the Health IT Standards Committee's Transport & Security Standards Workgroup convenes a meeting. The agenda and meeting materials will be posted on HealthIT.gov.
ThursdayThe Health IT Policy Committee's (#HITPC) Interoperability & HIE Workgroup meets at noon. The workgroup will post its agenda and meeting materials prior to the meeting.
Friday The HITPC Implementation, Usability & Safety Workgroup meets at 1pm. Agenda and other meeting materials should be posted prior to the meeting.

New eCQM Quality Assurance Training Videos

Two Quality Assurance (QA) training videos are now available. The Quality Assurance Review Process Training in JIRA video provides a step-by-step view of the workflow for the v2.0 eCQM QA review process, updates, and measures under development. The Review Coordinator Training in JIRA video covers the responsibilities of review coordinators for the eCQM review process. The video also covers the resources available to review coordinators. Links to the videos can also be found at the top of both the MUCD and the CAU project pages in JIRA @ http://oncprojecttracking.org/browse/CAU andhttp://oncprojecttracking.org/browse/MUCD.