by NYACP Chapter Attorney Laurie Cohen, Esq.
Setting the stage and providing further context for the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap which is expect to be released early next year, the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has released an updated 5 year strategic plan for Health IT.
According to the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan “represents a coordinated and focused effort to appropriately collect, share, and use interoperable health information to improve health care, individual, community and public health, and advance research across the federal government and in collaboration with private industry.”
The Plan describes the five Health IT goals and the 3 and 6 year strategies to achieve each goal. The goals are organized in three domains: collect, share and use.
Under the “Collect” domain, the stated goal is to continue to expand adoption of Health IT across the continuum of care to include long term care, behavioral health and other community-based providers as well as expand adoption and use of new telehealth and mobile technologies.
Under the “Share” domain, the second goal is to continue efforts to build a nationwide interoperable HIT infrastructure as envisioned in the Nationwide Roadmap.
Under the “Use” Domain, there are three goals:
1) Strengthen health care delivery by using Health IT that combines decision support and quality measure
2) Advance health and well-being of individuals and communities by using Health IT to:
- Engage individuals to participate more actively in the management of their own health.
- Permit public health entities to detect track and manage disease outbreaks, analyze health trend and respond in public health emergencies, among other uses.
3) Advance scientific knowledge and innovation by affording researching greater access to electronic health data.
The Strategic Plan is available at http://www.healthit.gov/policy-researchers-implementers/health-it-strategic-planning
The comment period on the Strategic Plan ends on February 6, 2015.
I.M. New York 
Interoperability is long overdue….many physicisns have invested in technology only to find they need newer versions to meet rules and regulations..,.. We hope these newest guidelines will help all of healthcare you achieve truly interoperable systems!