When President Obama signed the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) into law in 2016, it marked a significant shift in health policy and health law. Not since the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) has there been a more noteworthy change in how electronic health information (EHI) is approached under United States federal law. Importantly, the Cures Act’s information blocking provision should always be considered in the context of other laws that speak to how EHI is shared in health care.

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What should 2030 look like because of interoperability? That’s what we asked our stakeholders back in May 2021. And boy, did you all deliver! We received an overwhelming number of submissions, north of 700 one-liners, from Twitter and HealthIT.gov. We even got video submissions from leaders in the field – thank you again!

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As part of ONC’s ongoing charge to coordinate across federal and industry stakeholders, we determined it was necessary to adjust our Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) timeline. Although it may seem like this process has been around for a while, it’s still brand new and we’ve been looking at ways to optimize how the process aligns with other standards development work in the community. The changes we’ve made will help ensure timely publication of implementation specifications central to our cadence for new versions of USCDI.

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Each year since 2018, new Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health IT awardees join an entrepreneurial group dedicated to developing and scaling technological breakthroughs. Together, these awardees bring forth solutions to advance research capabilities and improve care delivery. This year is no exception. The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and DARTNet Institute are the newest awardees under ONC’s LEAP in Health IT funding opportunity.

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On the heels of the release of United States Core Data for Interoperability USCDI Version 2 (USCDI v2), ONC has also opened a single, synchronized feedback period for the Interoperability Standards Advisory(ISA), the Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP), and the draft United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 3 (USCDI v3). Taken together, ISA, SVAP, and draft USCDI v3 enable ONC to engage with the health care community to advance health IT standards that support high priority target areas such as the COVID-19 public health emergency,

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