Source: Healthcare Dive
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology released a sweeping proposed rule Tuesday that includes plans to improve data sharing with public health authorities — a major challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposal, called the Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Patient Engagement, Information Sharing, and Public Health Interoperability rule, or HTI-2, builds on the agency’s long-term work to improve interoperability and information sharing between providers, payers and the public health ecosystem, said ONC head Micky Tripathi during a press conference Wednesday. The rule comes months after the agency finalized the HTI-1 rule, another extensive regulation aimed at boosting interoperability. The latest proposal includes first-of-their-kind criteria for software used by public health agencies and payers to be certified by the ONC. The ONC Health IT Certification Program is a voluntary program that outlines standards and functionality for health IT. “It doesn’t make sense for us to have silos separating public health information from provider and clinical information from payer information. We need more of a holistic perspective,” Tripathi said.