Interoperability roadmap draft recommendations mark good start

The federal Health IT Policy Committee has continued its efforts to establish a 10-year interoperability with its meetings focusing on draft recommendations.

Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative and work group chair, reviewed the JASON Task Force and Governance subgroup materials to show how they could be incorporated into the interoperability roadmap.

The JASON Task Force recommended that the federal government focus on an escalating series of actions to catalyze market development of interoperability coordination structures and processes. “First and foremost, we want a set of recommendations that establishes government participation as engaged and vocal market participants, conducting active monitoring and convening, offering guidance and aligning incentive programs,” said Tripathi. The group said the government exerting direct authority to dictate terms of interoperability (requirements, monitoring, compliance, enforcement) should only be a last resort and only used to resolve gaps identified through active monitoring that the market seems unable to address on its own.

The goals must be measurable and not tied to a particular technology, Tripathi said.

Tripathi addressed four high-level thoughts:

• The interoperability roadmap needs to be more clear on what constitutes successful achievement of milestones. Are the milestones for vanguard innovators or for those bringing up the rear? Do they describe availability or adoption? “We may want to define expectations and predictions for the leading and lagging adopters,” he said.
• The time-phasing of the goals and milestones may be too conservative. The market is moving faster in many key areas, such as wearables and genomics.
• Coordinated architecture including core data service and the public API should be included as a key roadmap goal or milestone. “The roadmap focuses on high-level use cases and part of the roadmap ought to perhaps include something about the technical basis for how this happens recognizing that this evolves.”
• The federal government should initiate market motivator activities especially with regard to interoperability metrics and monitoring. “We think they shouldn’t wait for the roadmap. But calibrate governance activities to address observable and measurable gaps that the market fails to address on its own.”

What do you think--are they off to a good start?

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor