Wednesday, January 2, 2019

What's not going to change in 2019 for HealthIT?

While many are offering their opinions on what will be new or interesting for this new year, or reviewing the previous year, I thought I'd offer some observations on what isn't going to be different in 2019:

FHIR is still a work in progress.  Yes, FHIR Release 4 marks the first normative version of the standard, but much remains to be done and will continue to be worked on by HL7.

Certification will remain a focus of ONC.  Yep, Meaningful Use may be dead, but there's the CMS program after that, and the one after that and the other program, all of which will continue to require certified EHR technology.

APIs are still the way forward.  Most providers now have access to APIs, but the challenge will be to move them into production.  2019 will be a critical year for many providers to get the APIs rolled out to patients.  The roll-out still allows for a 90-day reporting period, enabling providers a smaller window for demonstrating the promoting interoperability capabilities, but will require use of 2015 certified technology (instead of a combination of 2014 and 2015 as for last year).

Finally, we'll still be hearing about a lack of HealthIT standards, and a lack of interoperability in 2019.  More on that tomorrow.

     Keith





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