A big week

This week, several organizations announced big moves in health IT, collaborating, strategizing and calling on Congress to act.

Following up on a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop last spring on health IT competition, the agency has announced plans to collaborate with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to help promote competition in health IT.

In an ONC blog post , ONC Policy Director Jodi Daniel, JD, MPH, and Karson Mahler, JD, ONC policy analyst, wrote that the collaboration will address several concerns discussed during the FTC workshop, including a lack of comparability and transparency in the health IT market; a lack of interoperability in the health IT market; and business practices in the health IT market that obstruct the electronic sharing of health data.

"ONC and FTC are cooperating and sharing information to better understand market dynamics related to health IT. In consultation with FTC, ONC will formulate policies that advance patient care through competition and innovation. Government policy may be able to improve transparency, promote interoperability, create incentives for quality and reduce barriers to competition and innovation," according to the blog post.

The FDA announced its four-year strategic plan which includes several health IT-related goals.  The agency is looking to develop a real-time information sharing system that would be available to regulators worldwide.

The agency will work with these entities to identify critical data elements, such as unique facility identifiers, to better standardize reporting and facilitate data exchange. Also, the report says the agency will expand its capabilities in intelligence-gathering and use—with an increased focus on risk analytics and modernized IT capabilities.

Also, the FDA is looking to bolster its surveillance systems that track adverse event reports utilizing EHRs, insurance claims databases and registries.

Meanwhile, a group of 58 patient advocates, providers and employers is calling on Congress to provide clarity on appropriate risk-based oversight of health IT.

The FDA Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA) of 2012 requires that the FDA, in consultation with ONC and the Federal Communications Commission, develop and post on their websites a report on a proposed strategy and recommendations on a risk-based framework for health IT.

With the publication of the FDASIA Health IT Report in April, “it is now time for lawmakers to pass legislation that achieves the complementary goals of protecting patients, ensuring safe and effective care and fostering continued innovation in the rapidly-growing health IT field,” according to the group’s letter.

“Developers, healthcare providers, patients and others still face ambiguity on the framework for health IT oversight. Without a clearly defined, risk-based oversight framework, we cannot effectively facilitate innovation in the use of technologies to improve health, protect patients and enhance clinical safety,” said Joel White, executive director of the Health IT Now Coalition, in a statement.

Things haven’t been slow on the health IT landscape for a very long time but this felt like a particularly big week with these developments.

Beth Walsh

Clinical Innovation + Technology editor