ONC plans, budget and colossal breach
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) held its annual meeting this week so there was much discussion about interoperability, value-based care, population health, patient engagement and more. The Department of Health and Human Services announced $28 million in grants for information exchange and ONC announced $8 million in grant funding for building the health IT workforce.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration released its fiscal year 2016 year budget which included a 52 percent budgetary increase for ONC to support interoperability, “optimization” of health IT, consumer engagement in care and President Obama’s new Precision Medicine Initiative.
In a letter accompanying the Department of Health and Human Services’ budget document, National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc, said that ONC next year will concentrate on building a long-elusive interoperable, nationwide health IT infrastructure--one that “assures data can be securely and appropriately collected, shared with and used by the right people at the right time to achieve access to more affordable quality care and better health.” Also, DeSalvo wrote, “ONC will move toward health IT optimization to further care transformation and increase interoperability through policies, standards and programs that will continue to help providers and consumers leverage health IT.”
Meanwhile, later in the week the breach affecting the data of 80 million current and former members of health insurer Anthem was announced. Experts had predicted a major breach for 2015 and unfortunately they were right.
Hackers launched a “very sophisticated” external cyberattack that placed at risk information including names, birthdates, medical ID/Social Security numbers, street addresses, email addresses, employment information and income data, according to a notice.
The FBI has launched an investigation into the incident.
Let’s just hope this isn’t the first in a string of similar breaches. Any organizations that thought cybersecurity could go on the back burner should probably re-evaluate.
Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.