The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT established the ONC Tech Lab to both encourage public input on standards development and serve as a central connection point for the office’s own work.
The development of standards through the lab, in fact, will help ONC further develop interoperability standards and to advance work planned under the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, which aims to apply the effective use of information and technology to achieve high-quality care.
“We will be using the ONC Tech Lab’s organizing structure to help us focus on what we can uniquely contribute to improve existing standards and build consensus around those that best serve specific interoperability needs – as we recently outlined in the 2016 Interoperability Standards Advisory,” Steven Posnack, director of ONC’s Office of Standards and Technology, wrote Tuesday on the agency's Health IT Buzz blog. “This means working directly with standards development organizations (SDOs) through their processes, partnering with stakeholders industry-wide to shorten feedback loops, and pilot testing to gain evidence about what can scale.”
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The ONC Tech Lab will be organized around standards coordination, testing and utilities, pilot programs and innovation such as developer challenges and start-up communities.
Posnack added that the Standards and Interoperability Framework, a five-year-old unit within ONC that drove standards including Direct and Consolidated CDA, will be winding down in the near term.
“For continuity purposes,” Posnack explained, “the relevant activities of any remaining ONC-supported S&I Framework initiatives will be completed under an ONC Tech Lab focus area.”
Posnack will also be presenting a session on ONC’s Interoperability Roadmap on Monday Feb. 29, 2016 at HIMSS16 in Las Vegas.
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