Following up on JASON report

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) continues its focus on interoperability. One priority is the agency’s response to the JASON advisory group’s report on developing a data infrastructure for the nation’s healthcare system.

During the Sept. 3 Health IT Policy Committee meeting, the co-chairs of the HIT Policy and Standards Committee’s JASON Task Force presented its draft recommendations. Micky Tripathi, CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative and David McCallie, senior vice president of medical informatics at Cerner, shared findings from listening sessions, the assumptions made in the report and shared their group’s preliminary recommendations.

The co-chairs said the JASON report concludes that Meaningful Use (MU) Stages 1 and 2 have not achieved meaningful interoperability “in any practical sense” for clinical care, research or patient access due to the lack of a comprehensive nationwide architecture for health information exchange (HIE).  The report noted the lack of an architecture supporting standardized APIs and recommended urgent focus on creating a “unifying software architecture.”

However, Tripathi said, "we believe that JASON did not adequately characterize the progress made in interoperability, though we agree that there is considerable room for improvement." Because JASON findings were made 18 months ago, six months before the start of MU Stage 2, ONC should take into account the current state of interoperability as well as current trends before incorporating JASON findings in any decisions on HIE plans, policies and programs, the group said.

Tripathi said market demand for interoperability is growing rapidly as is the growth of value-based purchasing, rising consumer expectations and standards of care.

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Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor