ONC Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020

ONC Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020

December 18, 2014

The office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released of its Federal Health IT Strategic roadmap for 2015-2020, updating the goals that was released during the year 2011.

The proposed road-map focuses on collecting the health and wellness data from patients, sharing them with their physicians and accessing it electronically with security.

The strategic plan has been developed based on the collaboration with 35 different federal entities, projecting five concrete goals related to how the data is collected, shared and accessed.

The five goals projected are as follows:

  • Goal 1: 
    Expand adoption of health IT. This goal has three objectives, according to ONC:
    • Increase the adoption and effective use of health IT products, systems, and services.
    • Increase user and market confidence in the safety and safe use of health IT.
    • Advance a national communications infrastructure that supports health, safety and care delivery.
  • Goal 2: 
    Advance secure and interoperable health information. Objectives here include enabling individuals, providers and public health entities to securely send, receive, find and use electronic health information.
    It also includes identifying, prioritizing and advancing technical standards to support secure and interoperable health information, protecting the privacy and security of health information.
  • Goal 3: 
    Strengthen healthcare delivery. Here, the hope is to improve healthcare quality, access and experience through safe, timely, effective, efficient, equitable and person-centered care support the delivery of high-value care, and work towards better clinical community services and population health.
  • Goal 4: 
    Advance the health and well-being of individuals and communities. The objective is to empower individuals, families, caregivers and promote public health.
  • Goal 5: 
    Advance research, scientific knowledge and innovation.
    ONC plans to work toward increased access to usability of high-quality electronic health information and services; faster development and commercialization of innovative technologies and solutions, to invest, disseminate and translate research on how health IT can improve healthcare delivery.
Apple Health App

Image Reference: https://healthit.gov/sites/default/files/ONC10yearInteroperabilityConceptPaper

With road map to be released with the month of January 2015, Apple has already initiated its play in providing the platform to collect the patients’ data and share the same with the required stack holders.

So, how do they do it....?

Apple’s role with Healthcare IT

Apple, one among the top electronic and IOS manufactures, thriving with jaw dropping technology, has initiated its plan and set its play with health care domain in its recent release of new iOS 8 operating system.

Apple’s new Health App retrieves health data from other health and wellness apps and provides the consolidated health information in its astonishing Health App’s Dashboard.

The third party health and wellness apps collects data like calories burned, blood sugar, cholesterol, vitamin intake and even vitals like heart rate and blood pressure. Apple’s Health Kit Platform incorporates these health and wellness data into Health App. As of now, more than 20 health and wellness apps are integrated with Health App.

Apple’s Developer’s Toolkit (HealthKit) also helps in integrating the Health App with other mobile apps like EHR Apps, Telehealth apps, etc. This is really a new dimension of sharing the patient’s data with the doctors for better examination and improved healthcare.

Apple’s Health App- A disruptive innovation with Electronic Healthcare domain

EHR Patient Portal Apps enable the patients to access their health information and communicate with their healthcare providers.

Telehealth, one of the top Health trend for 2014, provides healthcare services in a click of a button anyplace anytime.

Apple’s HealthKit will create a new dimension in the EHR and in the Telehealth Space. It acts as a middle man and transfers the required health and wellness data acquired (from wellness apps) to the other healthcare mobile applications like EHR Patient Portal Apps and Telehealth Patient Apps.

Apple Health App

Recently, Epic’s Patient Portal App, MyChart is integrated with Apple’s Health App. The Health App updates the patient’s health information to MyChart and this is synced with Epic.

Carl Dvorak, President of Epic in an email says that “Apple’s HealthKit has tremendous potential to help close the gap between consumer collected data and data collected in traditional healthcare settings”.

American Well has also integrated Apple’s Health App with its Telehealth App, Amwell.

Cerner technologies and Athena are planning to work with HealthKit in integrating clinical careteam and patient’s medical data to monitor patients chronic conditions.

Retrieving the required health metrics for a patient, depending upon the health condition would be a real challenge. Only the necessary wellness apps data could be made to sync with Health App.

Thanks... to Apple’s Major disruptive innovations in Health care.

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