The Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) represents the model by which the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will coordinate the identification, assessment, and public awareness of interoperability standards and implementation specifications that can be used by the health care industry to address specific interoperability needs including, but not limited to, interoperability for clinical, public health, and research purposes. ONC encourages all stakeholders to implement and use the standards and implementation specifications identified in the ISA as applicable to the specific interoperability needs they seek to address. Furthermore, ONC encourages further pilot testing and industry experience to be sought with respect to standards and implementation specifications identified as “emerging” in the ISA. Stakeholders are encouraged to review the content online and comment to provide feedback to ensure the ISA is as accurate as possible. Visit https://www.healthit.gov/isa/ to view the latest content. For a static version (for contracts, procurement, etc.), the 2017 Reference Edition is also available as PDF file.

The mission of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is to enable a new era of medicine through research, technology, and policies that empower patients, researchers, and providers to work together toward the development of individualized care. Building from the existing PMI Privacy and Trust Principles, this document offers security policy principles and a framework to guide decision-making by organizations conducting or participating in precision medicine activities. Recognizing that there is no “one size fits all” approach to managing data security, this document provides a broad framework for protecting participants’ data and resources in an appropriate and ethical manner that can be tailored to meet organization-specific requirements.

President Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in January 2015 to accelerate “biomedical discoveries and provide clinicians with new tools, knowledge, and therapies to select which treatments will work best for which patients.” Precision medicine is enabling a new era of clinical care through research, technology, and policies that empower patients, researchers, and providers to work together toward development of individualized care. Advancing the science of medicine also calls for a change in the culture of medical practice and medical research to engage individuals as active collaborators – not just as patients or research subjects. 

The House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate HELP Committee have engaged in a public, nonpartisan conversation with patients, researchers, innovators, and health care providers about what steps can be taken to expedite the discovery, development, and delivery of new treatments and cures and maintain America’s global status as the leader in biomedical innovation. The 21st Century Cures Act (“Cures”) is the product of that conversation.

 The information in this publication applies only to the Medicare Fee-For-Service Program (also known as Original Medicare) Calendar Year 2017

Prescription opioid misuse and opioid use disorder (OUD) are significant and growing public health problems in the United States (U.S.) that impact stakeholders across the healthcare sector, including private, employer-sponsored, and public health plans.(1-4)[1] Healthcare payers (herein, payers), employer organizations, and law enforcement all have strong motivations to combat the inappropriate prescribing of opioids to improve patient health and reduce expenditures for medically unnecessary services and therapies. These are largescale problems for which payers play a critical role in reducing fraud, waste, and abuse while ensuring access to medically necessary therapies

On August 23, 2012, CMS announced a final rule to govern Stage 2 of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. The rule specifies the Stage 2 criteria that eligible professionals (EPs), eligible hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAHs) must meet in order to continue to participate in the EHR Incentive Programs. The final rule for meaningful use Stage 2* intends to increase health information exchange between providers and promote patient engagement by giving patients secure online access to their health information.

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has published new Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule guidance documents as part of a Privacy and Security Toolkit to implement The Nationwide Privacy and Security Framework for Electronic Exchange of Individually Identifiable Health Information (Privacy and Security Framework). These new guidance documents discuss how the Privacy Rule can facilitate the electronic exchange of health information.

The March 2014 edition of the Policy Workgroup webinar focuses on the 2015 EHR Certification Criteria proposed rule and the Health IT Policy Committee’s Meaningful Use Stage 3 rule recommendations. Presenters include Steven Posnack, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC)

On Thursday May 1, 2014, Health Subcommittee conducted a hearing to discuss telehealth technologies that hold promises to transform the U.S. healthcare system and explore their positive and negative implications. Witnesees include Dr. Rashid Bashshur, Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, Dr. Tom Beeman, Gary Chard, and Kofi Jones.