Earlier this week, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) announced a new initiative where the agency will work directly with standards development organizations (SDO’s) and partner with stakeholders to “adapt and evolve ONC’s standards and technology work process” into a Tech Lab approach.
This initiative – the Interoperability Proving Ground (IPG), is an open, community platform where agencies and organizations can share their interoperability projects taking place across the nation. The IPG provides a simple way to share a succinct set of basics about an organization’s project (e.g., title, description, hyperlink to the project website) and “tag” it with any standards or keywords (e.g., C-CDA, FHIR, PDMP, ADT). The data shared populates the main IPG home page so anyone can search across the entire interoperability project database or view the interoperability project database.
As Steve Posnak, ONC’s Director, Office of Standards and Technology states that the Tech Lab’s organizing structure is:
“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.”
Well folks – AEGIS has been educating the health IT standards & interoperability community since 2010. We have been leading the charge, contributing our own R&D and building consensus around the use of testing to ensure standards-based “continuous” interoperability. To this end – we have effectively and judiciously supported the following crowd-sourced programs “focused on standards, testing, pilots and innovation” which we have officially entered into the IPG:
- eHealth Exchange Testing Program (Formerly Healtheway)
- HHS Office of Population Affairs (HHS/OPA) IHE QRPH Family Planning Profile
- CDC Send Immunization History (HL7 Version 2.5.1, I.G. Release 1.4)
- HL7 FHIR Conformance and Interoperability Test Platform
- AEGIS WildFHIR Client and Server
These Programs leverage AEGIS testing platforms – the Developers Integration Lab (DIL) and it’s FHIR-specific initiative, the Touchstone Project. The DIL has been called out by ONC as the:
“only tool in industry performing true interoperability and conformance testing of healthcare standards.”
AEGIS collaborates and educates a wide array of leading associations, organizations, and key federal agencies in addressing the challenges and barriers to ensuring interoperability. Numerous EHR vendors, members of the Federal Health IT community and government leaders engage with us at industry events, panels and congressional activities, as we’re looking forward to seeing many of them at HIMSS16. Why don’t you stop by too?
Come chat with our industry leaders at HIMSS16. We’ll be in Booth 12949 in Hall G (downstairs), directly in front of the Interoperability Showcase.