HHS Releases New Proposal for Public Health Interoperability

July 11, 2024

The federal government this week released a new proposal to improve information sharing between patients, providers, payors, and public health authorities.

Leaders from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) said the initiative seeks to improve information exchange, which was a significant challenge during the pandemic. Micky Tripathi, PhD, national coordinator for health information technology, called the rule a “tour de force” to advance interoperability.

“As always, we look forward to reviewing public comments and engaging with the health IT community in the weeks and months ahead,” Tripathi said.

Here’s what you need to know:

• Overall aim:  The rule seeks to make it easier to share information from the medical community and payors to better support public health.
• The big picture:  Without a so-called information exchange, it is harder to understand public health trends for immunization, lab results, and other key indicators. The pandemic highlighted the importance of accurate, timely analysis in these areas.
• What it does:  The rule creates new certification criteria designed to enable health information technology (IT) for public health as well as health IT for payers to be certified under the ONC Health IT Certification Program.
  • It also proposes adoption of a core interoperability standard by January 1, 2028.
• Quotable:  “These new certification criteria, which would improve public health response and advance the delivery of value-based care, focus heavily on standards-based application programming interfaces to improve end-to-end interoperability between data exchange partners (health care providers and public health organizations or payors,” HHS said in a statement.

Additional information is available online.