ONC Annual Meeting covers interoperability, usability, more

This week we brought you coverage of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT’s (ONC) annual meeting. The office took the opportunity to share information about several of its efforts to improve interoperability and usability of health IT tools.

Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, new ONC chief, said during the Town Hall meeting that she has “seen the pain” the healthcare industry is experiencing due to ICD-10 and Meaingful Use (MU) pressures.

A panel discussed the status of interoperability. “We have made tremendous progress,” said Arien Malec, vice president of clinical solutions strategy for Relay Health, a unit of McKesson. “We have an ecosystem where two providers can send information securely.” Despite the progress, “it’s nowhere near far enough.”

Malec also said we are seeing a sea change because MU Stage 1 raised the bar in terms of the number of providers enabled with electronic data capture. “We’re starting to see people clamor for data pooled for analytics and for data to be used for clinical decision support. We are going from the government pushing people to now seeing pull from the healthcare sector."

Dave Whitlinger, executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative, said his organization has a backlog of more than 300 providers looking to get connected to the network. “That’s with my team churning out 1.4 connections a day because this stuff is so hard to connect. Demand for HIE is growing and growing but tens of thousands of dollars to connect is ridiculous. Why are we not at plug and play?”

The demand for interoperability “puts the pressure on,” he added, but it’s time to “get on with it and start to employ strategies that other high-tech sectors have done in the past.

The numbers certainly support greater interoperability, according to Whitlinger. One of the more mature HIEs in New York did a study on more than half of the participating providers. Overall, they experienced a 30 percent reduction in redundant labs, imaging studies and avoidable ED visits. “The system pays for all the waste. The business community in Rochester said they are not going to pay for redundant services anymore.”

Also during the meeting, ONC announced a bilateral agreement signed by the U.S. and United Kingdom to advance health IT tools and data sharing to accelerate improvements in the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery in both countries.

Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and U.K. Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, broadcast live from his office in London, signed the memorandum of understanding, which “lays the groundwork for an unprecedented amount of health data sharing” while driving quality indicators, liberating data, adopting digital record and priming the healthcare market, Sebelius said.

The arrangement will focus on sharing of quality indicators, liberating data, adopting digital health record systems and priming the health IT market.

What did you think of the information shared and topics discussed at this year's meeting? Please share your thoughts.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor