Portrait of Avinash Shanbhag , ,

On the Road to Cures Update: Certified API Technology

Avinash Shanbhag | August 19, 2022

The moments we’ve all been waiting for since 2016 are fast approaching: the 21st Century Cures Act infrastructure is coming into place in 2022! The Cures Act laid out a vision for a rich health IT ecosystem of standards-based APIs and nationwide health information networks to securely open up electronically accessible information to patients themselves and to health care professionals supporting their care. As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, progress on nationwide network integration via TEFCA continues apace,

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Portrait of Chelsea Richwine , , ,

Electronic Public Health Reporting among Hospitals & Physicians in the Year Prior to the Pandemic: Implications for Health Equity & Pandemic Response

Chelsea Richwine | August 18, 2022

The pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed gaps in the nation’s public health infrastructure that pose challenges to effective communication between health care providers and public health agencies.  According to ONC analyses of nationally representative survey data from hospitals and physicians collected in 2019, over 70% of hospitals experienced at least one major challenge with electronic public health reporting and less than 1 in 5 primary care physicians—and about a quarter of pediatric and internal medicine primary care physicians—reported electronically exchanging data with public health agencies.

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Portrait of Carmen Smiley , , ,

Project US@ – Advancing Health Equity Requires Better Data

Carmen Smiley | August 9, 2022

One of the single greatest social determinants of health is where a patient lives.  It can determine their risk factor for a specific illness or chronic disease, such as asthma, and can also affect much broader measures of well-being and life expectancy. Thus, our ability as healthcare professionals to measure and act on such factors relies heavily on how we accurately capture and manage standardized patient addresses. The standardization of patient address data across healthcare strengthens our ability to measure the social,

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Portrait of Micky Tripathi , , ,

E Pluribus Unum

Micky Tripathi | August 5, 2022

As our nation transitions to a digital healthcare system, our stakeholders are discovering new opportunities for using health information technology to advance health care delivery, public health, and research to improve people’s lives. The federal government is no exception in this regard; agencies across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are beginning to leverage the data and capabilities available through electronic health records for a broad range of federal activities and programs, including product safety and surveillance,

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