Open for Public Comments: Proposal to ONC on S&I PH Reporting Initiative

PARTICIPATE IN THE PUBLIC REVIEW

Proposal for the

ONC S&I Framework

Public Health Reporting Initiative

        Comment Period: August 19, 2011 - September 6, 2011

Dear Members of Public Health, Clinical and Health IT Vendor Communities!

We are requesting your participation in the Public Review of the Proposal to the Office of National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to establish the Public Health Reporting Initiative under the ONC Standards & Interoperability (S&I) Framework.

The goal of the proposed S&I Public Health Reporting Initiative is to harmonize the use of HIT standards and create reference implementation guides to support interoperable bi-directional communication between clinical care and public health agencies for selected information exchanges (use cases).  

The proposed timeline for this Initiative is October 2011 through December 2013, and will strive to produce deliverables for timely consideration of the HIT standards Committee during FY 2013.

The S&I Public Health Reporting Initiative will:

v  focus on individual-patient reporting from EHR systems and patients/consumers to public health agencies (local, state and federal)

v  examine several reporting use cases that share similar business processes, data and information exchange requirements.  The Initiative will then select candidate use cases that can benefit from the harmonization of HIT standards and implementation guide(s).  The harmonized use cases will be forwarded as reference implementations (testing methods, tools, certification criteria and processes) for consideration for Stage 3 of Meaningful Use adoption

v  identify demonstration pilot partners to help test artifacts from this Initiative, including the deployment of certified HIT products to enable information exchange and interoperability between EHRs and public health information systems

v  develop a Roadmap for Public Health Reporting HIT Standardization  that  extends and supports the long term harmonization and alignment of public health information exchanges and systems  with the recommendations and deliverables produced under this Initiative

We are also soliciting your feedback and suggestions for possible USE CASES that can be harmonized and delivered as candidate reference implementations under this Initiative.

Please provide your comments on the Initiativs Charter (attached),

and USE CASES by September 6, 2011 at: http://wiki.siframework.org/Comment+on+the+Proposal+for+the+ONC+SI+Framework++Public+Health+Reporting+Initiative

Please also join the Initiatis Sprint Team to finalize the Proposal in September 2011 by attending conference calls on September 7 and 14 from 4-5pm ET.

Please contact Wendy Scharber at wendy@phdsc.org to join the Initiatives Sprint Team.

Participate in Building HIT Interoperability for Public Health!