What's Happening in Health IT

In This Issue

Can’t get enough about interoperability in health IT? Did you know that 4-in-10 hospitals have necessary clinical information electronically available at the point of care? ONC has just released a new data brief highlighting this and other key measures of interoperability among U.S. hospitals. Also, be sure to check out our blog post on this topic for more discussion on these measures and how they fit into the goals of the draft, shared Interoperability Roadmap.

ONC Broadens Access to Open Health IT Data

ONC has broadened access to its open data through the Health IT Dashboard. ONC provides access to data on various health IT topics, including: health IT adoption and use, health information exchange and interoperability, ONC HITECH programs, EHR vendors, and electronic prescribing. The publicly available data is now accessible in open and machine-readable formats, including .csv, .json, and .xml. All the open data includes up-to-date and thorough documentation, which, like the data, are available in both human and machine-readable formats.

8th Annual HIPAA Security Conference

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR) are pleased to co-host the 8th annual conference, Safeguarding Health Information: Building Assurance through HIPAA Security, on September 2 & 3, 2015 at the Grand Hyatt, Washington, D.C. Speakers include ONC Chief Privacy Officer Lucia Savage, (@SavageLucia) who will talk about health information privacy and security. Registration is still open, so sign up!

Health Centers Turn 50

This being National Health Center Week, our friends at the Health Resources and Service Administration (@HRSAgov) asked us to share this post and infographic about the evolution of health centers over the past 50 years. Can you name the two states that launched the first two health centers? If you can’t, read on and watch the video!

Health IT Safety Webinar Series

Join us on August 20, 2015 1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT for the ninth webinar of the 10-part series on health IT and patient safety, “Information Transparency and Health IT Safety”. This free webinar presents perspectives on information transparency and health IT safety from the viewpoints of the patient, the practitioner, leaders of health systems improvement, and policymakers. Presenters are:

Robert Wachter, MD, Professor, UCSF School of Medicine. The implications of transparency on health IT: data at the level of individual patients (first presentation) and The implications of transparency on health IT: data at the level of providers and healthcare delivery organizations (second presentation);
Beth Daley Ullem, MBA, Patient Advocate. Former Board Member, Thedacare and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. Board of Governors, National Patient Safety Foundation. Board of Directors, Solutions for Patient Safety. Board of Directors, Center for Healthcare Value. Reactor to first presentation;
Marshall Allen, MA, Reporter for ProPublica. Reactor to second presentation;
Jonathan S. Wald, MD, MPH, FACMI, Director, Patient-Centered Technologies, RTI International (Moderator).

Slides and audio of previous webinars in this series are also now available

FCC to Hold Broadband Health Events in Florida

The Federal Communications Commission’s Connect2Health Task Force will travel to Miami and Jacksonville, Florida, on September 30 and October 1, to highlight how broadband-enabled health technologies can transform health and care for seniors and people with disabilities. As our population ages and more Americans assume caregiving tasks for family members, broadband health technologies hold great promise to help address access to care issues, facilitate the next generation of caregiving and provide new self-management tools. The FCC will partner with the Mayo Clinic and AARP for these events. Visit https://www.fcc.gov/health for more information and to register.

Federal Advisory Committee Schedule Week of August 17 (all times EDT)

Monday

12:00 p.m.: The #HITSC Interoperability Standards Advisory Task Force has scheduled a meeting. Learn more:http://bit.ly/1WiSiOL

Wednesday

12:00 p.m.: ONC’s new Precision Medicine Task Force is scheduled to meet. Watch for details here:http://bit.ly/1N3wtiX

Thursday

10:30 p.m.: The Interop Standards Advisory Task Force meets. More details are here: http://bit.ly/1Pl06L5

Friday

12:00 p.m.: Our new barriers to interop task force has a scheduled virtual meeting. Follow along here:http://bit.ly/1UD0lUz