ONC Will Simplify Guides for Establishing Exchange Standards

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT plans to develop a clearer set of technical descriptions for establishing the standard clinical document formats for exchanging summary information as patients move across settings of care.ONC will also consolidate into a consistent template-based guide the advice offered by multiple organizations for implementing the standard document formats used to share data about patients’ medications and problems.

These are among the first projects that ONC has launched for its Standards & Interoperability Framework, which will tackle persistent challenges that healthcare providers face in successfully exchanging information in order to meet meaningful use requirements of electronic health records (EHRs), according to Dr. Doug Fridsma, director of ONC’s Office of Standards and Interoperability.