This evening, AEGIS was the recipient of a very special award along with our recent client, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Population Affairs (OPA). Our work had been nominated for the 2016 FedHealthIT Innovation Awards which are sponsored by G2Xchange Health. This year the program issued awards in five (5) categories:
- Mobile/IoT
- Interoperability
- Data Solutions
- Cloud
- Digital Engagement
Dozens of nominations were submitted from across government. Our work was one of three finalists for the Interoperability award. We were disappointed, at least temporarily, when our name wasn’t called.
David Blackburn, Founder and CEO of G2Xchange Health shared with the audience that an “overall” award was being given due to a nomination “that exceeded all expectations of the evaluation team.”
However, at the conclusion of these award category announcements, David Blackburn, Founder and CEO of G2Xchange Health shared with the audience that an “overall” award was being given due to a nomination “that exceeded all expectations of the evaluation team.” Representatives from HHS, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), Office of Population Affairs (OPA) and AEGIS were present and recognized for the award for the Family Planning Profile (FPP) Conformance Harness Platform Project. Christina Lachance, Health IT Team Lead & Johanna Goderre, Senior Health Informatics Advisor and technical lead accepted the award.
The focus of the OPA program was to aid Title X reporting using a Family Planning (FP) specific profile for Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) based electronic health record exchange. AEGIS was the implementation contractor fulfilling OPA’s vision. Some of the most innovative aspects of the OPA program included:
- Developing the t
esting harness for validating organizations’ implementation of the FP profile. - Advancing the FP profile through the IHE process by recruiting and testing early adopters of the Form Filler actor at the 2015 IHE North American Connectathon.
- Demonstrating the FP profile in typical use with selected vendors, vetting it further and increasing its visibility to vendors and other implementers, at the 2015 HIMSS Interoperability Showcase.
- Preparing for testing of the other actors in the profile (necessary for profile to advance to final text status) at future Connectathons.
- Improving the quality of the FP profile throughout this process.
- Refining strategic plans for the FP profile and FPAR 2.0 capabilities.
Perhaps the most significant take-away from an innovation standpoint is the whole idea that an agency, community, etc. can visualize a unique set of health data – a profile – and though utilizing a proven process and robust tools relatively quickly make that profile part of the standard language of electronic health information exchange.
AEGIS’ work leveraged our Developers Integration Lab (DIL) for interoperability and standards conformance testing. With the corresponding test cases added to the DIL, now participants who implement this profile can run the same level of conformance standards checking from anywhere at any time.
AEGIS recently contributed the HHS Office of Population Affairs (HHS/OPA) IHE QRPH Family Planning Profile to the newly launched the Interoperability Proving Ground (IPG), an open, community platform where agencies and organizations can share their interoperability projects taking place across the nation.
AEGIS is both honored and thrilled to be part of this FedHealthIT Innovation Award. We congratulate all the category winners on their outstanding innovations:
- Award for Mobile / IoT Category
- Agency: Health and Human Services
- Project/Program: Suicide Safe Mobile Application
- Award for Interoperability Category
- Agency: Health and Human Services
- Project/Program: Department of Appeals Board Automated Case Tracking System
- Award for Data Solutions Category
- Agency: Veterans Affairs
- Project/Program: Perceptive Reach
- Award for Cloud Category
- Agency: Defense Health Agency
- Project/Program: Interagency Comprehensive Plan for Care Coordination Support
- Award for Digital Engagement Category
- Agency: Social Security Administration
- Project/Program: Customer Engagement Tools