Source: GovCIO
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC)’s second version of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) supports more interoperability measures for health care systems, including support for Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) application programming interface (API) exchange and easier access to data for patients. “We have long intended for TEFCA to have the capacity to enable FHIR API exchange. This is in direct response to the health IT industry’s move toward standardized APIs with modern privacy and security safeguards and allows TEFCA to keep pace with the advanced, secure data services approaches used by the tech industry,” said National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi in a release announcing the Common Agreement update. In the new version, participants can now join TEFCA with multiple qualified health information networks (QHINs), which gives patients more options and allows flexibility when exchanging their data.