Government & Policy

So says a new OIG audit, which found the VA and Oracle Health have been misaligned in their responses to outages throughout Electronic Health Record Modernization. While the agency has made procedural improvements, it needs to go further, auditors say.

The aim is to bolster more consistent use of the HL7 interoperability standard across HHS, says the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy, and help "break down the silos separating patients, providers, payers, public health and research."

This comes as the government outlined a four-year national medical AI research and development roadmap.

This includes a benchmarking platform for validating healthcare AI models.

Despite a greater ability for healthcare entities to challenge regulatory decrees in court, increased litigation could result in unfavorable court decisions that are harder to fix, healthcare attorneys say.

Confusion around CMS' final rules has been a challenge, yet the industry continues to advance seamless data exchange.

The investigation, billed as the first of its kind, had alleged that Dallas-based Piece Technologies made "deceptive claims" about the accuracy of its artificial intelligence products, which are deployed at several hospitals in the Lone Star State.

Both electronic health record vendors have made open API code available to their health system clients that enables them to coordinate with the VA when treating veterans who have sought care at community providers.

Petra Wilson, HIMSS senior advisor, European health policy and EU affairs, says digital health projects should find synergies with each other and build user trust to ensure sustainability after funding programs end.

To effectively share data with patients, hospitals and health systems must build a tech foundation centered on interoperability, driven by rigorous data standardization and secure exchanges – and the adoption of HL7's FHIR.