The Department of Health and Human Services has been hard at work attempting to advance the status of health IT, encouraging providers across the country to increase connectivity of electronic health records and improve interoperability of health technology. The aim is to enhance population health and make health care more affordable for all Americans. But this isn't a change that happens overnight, even if the initiative to strengthen health IT has made great strides in the last decade. In the past 10 years, more than 80 percent of hospitals have begun meaningful use measures for electronic health records, and every state in the country has adopted some form of health information exchange service. To continue progress in the next 10 years, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has outlined the blueprint for interoperability.

Better information sharing is the central theme of the report, which was published June 5, 2014, and outlines a 10-year plan to meet its objectives. It involves the implementation of several tools, including standards for electronic health records, certification testing for compliance of these standards and enhanced privacy and security guidelines. The report also emphasizes the importance of more supportive clinical, business and regulatory environments as well as rules concerning governance and patient engagement. The blueprint for this 10-year plan is divided into three different parts:

Three-year agenda
The first portion of the interoperability plan focuses on further implementation of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act to fine-tune the health IT infrastructure. To do so will require improving health information exchange for more fluid sharing of electronic health records across different vendor platforms, such as through the use of vendor neutral archives. This will hopefully lead to greater care coordination and greater patient care, but it can also mean long-term cost savings for providers and, in effect, lower costs for the public.

The three-year agenda will also involve standardization of the vocabulary surrounding health care IT and determining the requirements for certifications for those institutions and doctors that comply with interoperability regulations. The ONC will address other important issues, such as the reliability and quality of data and ways to track the origin of data to ensure accuracy. The department will also put into operation a common framework that will create greater trust of electronic health records, addressing security and privacy concerns, business policies and practical challenges involved in implementation.

Six-year agenda
Over the plan's first six years, the ONC expects that the nation's health care system will realize greater interoperability among departments and institutions. It will also focus on heightened patient participation, with the intention that more involvement from the public as active consumers rather than passive patients will mean greater overall population health. Expansion of mobile health and remote access will make this goal reachable. Additionally, providers will be able to more easily compile health care information taken from groups of patients to monitor their health status to come to resolutions for disparities in population health.

Ten-year agenda
By the 10th year of the plan, the ONC aims to have created a more connected health care system that involves fluid health information exchange and greater patient participation. All levels of public health will have improved information sharing. This, in combination with more advanced technical tools, will allow for broader use of health information and more evidence-based research that directly affects patient care. Doctors and other health care professionals will be able to engage in continuous learning through the analysis of easily accessible and complete patient data, which is expected to lead to containment of outbreaks and epidemics, fewer public health threats and augmented population health in general.

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