HHS Awards $1.5M To Improve Information Flow For Patients And Providers

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) today announced seven recipients of two Cooperative Agreement programs to improve the flow of health information.

The awardees will share a total of $1.5M to create standards-based solutions that facilitate the exchange of health information. The lessons learned from these efforts will help advance innovation in using electronic health information by testing new approaches to improve the way health care is provided and its impact on the provider and patient experience.

“We are excited to support these innovative projects that advance the use of common standards to improve care, particularly in the categories of comprehensive medication management, laboratory data exchange, and care coordination,” said B. Vindell Washington, M.D., M.H.C.M., national coordinator for health information technology. “These programs will serve as key building blocks for improving the patient and provider experience with the flow of health information.”

At the Health Datapalooza Conference this past May, ONC announced the High Impact Pilot (HIP) and Standards Exploration Award (SEA) funding opportunities which generated  interest from more than 35 applicants. Winning selections were based on several factors, including the programs’ ability to address health IT challenges, scalability, potential impact, technical approach, innovation, creativity, and each program’s alignment with the goals of the Department unlock health data and improve the health of Americans.

The awardees for the High Impact Pilot programs are:

• The Health Collaborative: The Heartland Pilot is a partnership between The Health Collaborative and the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC). It will use existing standards to advance a “network of networks” model as part of a Patient-Centered Data Model pilot project.
• Lantana Consulting Group: This project will create a new standard for electronic pharmacist care plans (ePhCP), which have not been included in the Interoperability Standards Advisory. The project pilot will use health IT standards to integrate pharmacist care plans into coordination efforts for patient care across the health continuum.
• RxREVU, Inc.: This collaborative project between RxREVU, a Denver-based prescription intelligence company, and the Banner Health System plans to leverage patient-specific data shared via Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) – a promising new interoperability standard – to reduce overall prescription drug spending, provide useful information on patient medication adherence, and operationalize organizational best practices.
• The University of Utah: This community primary care project will allow clinicians and the University of Utah’s vascular surgery service that use common electronic health record (EHR) platforms to share information through a novel closed-loop surgical referrals dashboard application. This app will be designed to integrate with commercially available EHRs using the emerging Sustainable Medical Applications and Reusable Technologies (SMART) on FHIR standard.

The awardees for the Standards Exploration Awards are:

• Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology: The Arkansas project will implement interoperable, bi-directional health information exchange with behavioral health providers.
• Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center: The Cincinnati project will explore the cost efficiencies of integrating healthcare and clinical research systems with the medical center’s electronic health record (EHR). This will enable patient data from the EHR to be used for research as well as direct patient care more efficiently.
• Sysbiochem: In collaboration with Boston Children’s Hospital, Intermountain Healthcare, and Massachusetts General Hospital, Sysbiochem is developing services to facilitate the integrated flow of data between an EHR, Laboratory Informatics System and an analytic application to help clinicians coordinate care for  breast cancer patients

Awardees are expected to report results September 15, 2017.