Wes Barker
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Wes Barker's Latest Blog Posts
A Decade of Data Examined: Progress and Challenges in Electronic Public Health Reporting
Wes Barker | July 22, 2024
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted deficiencies in the U.S. public health infrastructure, leaving health care providers and public health authorities (PHAs) ill-equipped to collect and exchange timely and accurate information needed to inform rapid response during the public health emergency. The fourth post in our “A Decade of Data Examined” blog series highlights early efforts to incentivize electronic public health reporting by health care providers to support PHAs’ public health surveillance and ability to respond to current and future public health threats.
Read Full Post.Raising the Bar on Interoperability – A Decade of Data Show that “Sometimes” Isn’t Good Enough
Wes Barker | June 17, 2024
A decade ago, as EHRs were rapidly implemented across the country, ONC sought to make sure these newly implemented technologies were interoperable. Since 2014, ONC has tracked progress toward widespread interoperability among hospitals and physicians by measuring their engagement in four domains of health information exchange: electronically finding, sending, receiving, and integrating patient health information. As shown in the figure below, US hospitals experienced widespread progress toward interoperability with 70% of hospitals reporting that they ‘sometimes’ or ‘often’ engaged in all four domains in 2023,
Read Full Post.Digital Health Company Experiences Using EHR APIs
Wes Barker | February 15, 2024
New research from a survey of digital health companies shows that most companies (73%) use standards-based application programming interfaces (APIs) when integrating with electronic health records (EHRs) (Figure 1). In 2020, ONC finalized its Cures Act Final Rule, which codified the use of the Health Level 7® (HL7®) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources® (FHIR®) standard for “certified APIs” that can enable secure, programmatic access to a patient’s electronic health information (EHI).
Read Full Post.A Decade of Data Examined: Patient Access to Electronic Health Information
Wes Barker | December 11, 2023
The world is better off and getting better, compared to popular opinion and what’s broadcast on the news, says Hans Rosling and his co-authors, using simple, comprehensive measures, in Factfulness. Sometimes taking a step back and looking at the big picture (and the data) is important to take stock of actual progress and the necessary work to come. In that spirit, we’re kicking off a new blog series: “A Decade of Data Examined.” These posts will provide a comprehensive look at measures and metrics we’ve tracked for ten or more years to assess progress on important ONC mission activities and help chart a path forward on the work still to come.
Read Full Post.Checking In on Hospital EHR APIs: Can Providers and Patients Access and Share Health Data via Apps?
Wes Barker | September 11, 2023
Thanks to a decade of effort, nearly every U.S. hospital today stores health data electronically. To put that data to work, however, clinicians and patients need to be able to access and appropriately share that data.
To implement the 21st Century Cures Act and help meet those needs, ONC’s Health IT Certification Program adopted new requirements and standards for application programming interfaces (APIs) that support the secure exchange of patient data between electronic health records (EHRs) apps.