ONC Launches New USCDI+ Platform to Drive Data Harmonization

After several months of development and testing, the new ONC USCDI+ platform has gone live, providing a single platform for organizing and building out various USCDI+ datasets.

The USCDI+ initiative aims to help federal agencies and industry partners build upon ONC’s United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) data standard to support various quality measurement use cases.

The new USCDI+ platform provides an enhanced user experience over previous USCDI+ data collection and review tools, ONC officials noted in a HealthITBuzz blog post. Improvements include the ability to see in and across USCDI+ datasets for comparison, analysis, and harmonization.

The tool also allows users to filter and export data elements by information within the datasets.

“The USCDI+ program is key to ONC achieving our mission to create systemic improvements in health and care through access, exchange, and use of data,” ONC officials wrote in the blog post. “This approach allows HHS to assure that extensions build from the same core USCDI foundation, align to harmonized data standards and taxonomies, and create the opportunity for aligning similar data needs across programs and use cases.”

“Through the USCDI+ program, ONC is embracing our ‘coordinator’ role to help our federal and industry partners successfully achieve their missions,” they added. “It will help the federal government more effectively use taxpayer dollars in health IT activities and will benefit industry with better alignment of data standards across federal programs.”

Coinciding with the launch of the USCDI+ platform launch, ONC is accepting data element submissions and comments for two USCDI+ Public Health use cases: Case Reporting and Laboratory Data Exchange.

The comment period will go through March 4, 2024. ONC expects to release updated datasets in late spring.

To comment or submit data elements for consideration, “Log in” to https://uscdiplus.healthit.gov. Users can create an account by clicking on “Create USCDI+ Account” and following the steps.