Boston Children's Hospital, MedStar Health earn ONC interoperability award

The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology has awarded nearly $2 million to the Boston Children’s Hospital and MedStar Health Research Institute to help advance interoperability in healthcare.

According to a release, the funding is through the ONC’s Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health IT and will help the healthcare organizations address “emerging and future challenges to advance the development and use of interoperable health IT.”

“It is critical that the field of healthcare innovate and leverage the latest technological advancements and breakthroughs far quicker than it currently does to optimize real-time solutions, especially in areas that are ripe for acceleration,” the release stated. “To do so, the awardees will further a new generation of health IT development and inform the innovative implementation and refinement of standards, methods and techniques for overcoming major barriers and challenges as they are identified.”

Boston Children's Hospital will use the funding to expand the scope and use of application programming interfaces (APIs), while MedStar Health will advance clinical knowledge at the point of care.

“We expect these two awardees to demonstrate where healthcare interoperability can go next,” Don Rucker, national coordinator for health information technology, said in a statement. “Their efforts should inform a new generation of health IT development.”

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Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls. 

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