ONC Awards Funding to SDOH Data Exchange, Interoperability Projects

ONC has announced the 2021 Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health IT awardees for their interoperability projects that aim to enhance social determinants of health (SDOH) data exchange and promote EHR optimization for clinical research capabilities.

In a HealthITBuzz blog post, ONC officials Brett Andriesen, Jawanna Henry, Tracy Okubo, Allison Dennis, and Kevin Chaney, MGS, highlighted the interoperability projects of the two awardees: The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and DARTNet Institute.

ONC’s recent release of United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 2 (USCDI v2) includes specific data elements related to the collection, access, use, and reporting of standardized social determinants of health (SDOH) data.

SDOH data exchange gives providers a more well-rounded view of what conditions may be impacting patient health and wellbeing, allowing for targeted intervention, the ONC officials noted.

However, they explained that sophisticated health IT solutions are key to maximizing SDOH information. Healthcare organizations must also integrate the data into a closed loop social services referral system to ensure care coordination when provider refer a patient to other social services providers.

UT Austin will create an application programming interface (API)-enabled social and health information platform using the Health Level 7 International (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard to integrate a closed loop social services referral system.

The referral system will be available to EHR systems in all federally qualified health centers to help manage the SDOH needs of patients in pursuit of health equity.

ONC officials noted that the system will leverage use cases developed by Gravity Project for the collection of SDOH data related to food security, housing stability, and transportation access.

The second awardee, DARTNet Institute, will create a data processing framework to streamline EHR data for research purposes.

“Health data comes from a wide variety of sources, and that means more often than not that the data is far from consistently standardized,” ONC officials explained. “Currently, EHR data is primarily collected for administrative and clinical use. However, this data would be immensely valuable to medical and public health researchers – if it was readily usable by them.”

DARTNet Institute will build and evaluate a data processing framework to support health data interoperability across multiple EHR systems. This framework will make valuable clinical data usable for research and AI-enabled machine learning models, the officials noted.

“The collection of this data will provide the type of high-quality health data sets needed for training AI based models and research needs,” they wrote. “This will ultimately help advance the national health IT infrastructure to support research.”

Last month, ONC released a draft set of health IT developer measures for the Electronic Health Record (EHR) Reporting Program’s condition of maintaining ONC health IT certification.

As part of the 21st Century Cures Act of 2016, Congress created the EHR Reporting Program which requires ONC Health IT Certification Program developers to publicly report certain information about their certified health IT products to maintain certification.

The program aims to bolster market competition by making information on certified EHR systems publicly available.

ONC took a dual-track approach to implement the EHR Reporting Program. In 2018, ONC contracted with the Urban Institute to develop the first track: voluntary, user-reported measures related to certified health IT usability, interoperability, and security. These measures are now available for industry stakeholder adoption.

At the July 14, 2021, HITAC meeting, ONC released a draft set of developer measures for the EHR reporting program’s condition of maintaining health IT certification from the Cures Act.

These developer-reported measures aim to address information gaps in the marketplace and provide insights into various use cases for certified health IT.

Healthcare stakeholders can comment on the measures until September 14, 2021. ONC will then initiate notice and comment rulemaking.