A new initiative is seeking to collect big data on individuals in rural areas to understand and alleviate these health disparities. The Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal (RURAL) cohort study is working to address critical gaps in knowledge of heart and lung disorders in rural counties in the southeastern US.
The study will be led by researchers from 16 different institutions across the US, and will focus on ten rural counties in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missi
As the federal National Coordinator for Health IT, Micky Tripathi, Ph.D. has a full plate. He's tasked with strengthening health data sharing as the nation continues to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and implementing new interoperability regulations. Addressing health equity also will be a top priority as he leads the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), the health IT arm of HHS, the interoperability veteran said Thursday.
The Biden administration could require enhanced patient data sharing, update EHR requirements, and increase API access to improve public health sharing and give experts the tools to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, according to Ben Moscovitch, project director of Health Information Technology at Pew Charitable Trusts. “The Biden administration plans to work with Congress to respond to the coronavirus, but unless these issues are resolved, challenges with sharing data could c
The healthcare industry has come a long way with regard to interoperability, especially with the new rules proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services, set to take effect April 5. These rules aim to provide patients with unprecedented access to their data. The industry has focused on enabling the basic exchange of health records between providers and made great progress, but the connective tissue that enables data management — including matching and cleaning data — is la
Following stakeholder feedback, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology made several key updates to the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA), highlighted by COVID-19, public health emergency, and admission, discharge and transfer (ADT) notifications to a record locator service.
ONC is in constant scrutiny of EHR interoperability, which is especially apparent during a natural disaster or a pandemic, such as COVID-19. ONC added the Specialty Care
Despite increased attention to social determinants of health and access to care, racial health disparities persist in mortality rates across the country, according to a new report published in JAMA Network Open. The cross-sectional study analyzed 26 million death records from the National Vital Statistics System, spanning from 2008 to 2019. From this data, researchers calculated all-cause mortality rates for the general population, the Black population, and the White populat
The Gravity Project, a community-led HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Accelerator, published an implementation and recommendation guide for social determinants of health (SDOH) data and terminology, with a focus on food insecurity, housing instability and quality, and transportation access. Research shows that identifying and implementing a patient’s SDOH data into the EHR is crucial to finding answers to significant health issues. Studies show this data account
When a natural disaster or a pandemic occurs, it is typical for the impacted area to set up pop-up hospitals for volunteer clinicians to help when hospitals are overcrowded. With individuals arriving at these pop-up hospitals from neighboring cities or states, interoperability is crucial, but it is also tricky to attain. Developed by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) in 2014, The Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) platform provides secure
