News Feature | October 23, 2014

JASON's 6 Tips For Interoperability

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

6 Tips For Interoperability

The JASON task force presented its interoperability recommendations to CMS.

The ONC’s JASON task force reiterated a number of its previous recommendations to CMS on October 15, focusing on interoperability. According toGovernment Health IT, JASON is a group of independent scientists that advise the federal government.

John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and vice chair of the HIT Standards committee, explained the JASON task force essentially “takes a set of general recommendations and turns them into actionable next steps.”

Following are six recommendations most recently made by JASON co-chairs David McCallie, vice president of medical informatics at Cerner, and Micky Tripathi, CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative:

  1. Focus on interoperability. ONC and CMS should re-align the meaningful use program to shift focus to expanding interoperability, and initiating adoption of Public APIs.
  2. Establish an industry-based ecosystem. A Coordinated Architecture based on market-based arrangements should be defined to create an ecosystem to support API-based interoperability.
  3. Set up Data Sharing Networks. The architecture should be based on a Coordinated Architecture that loosely couples market-based Data Sharing Networks.
  4. Enable the Public API as basic conduit of interoperability. The Public API should allow data- and document-level access to clinical and financial systems according to contemporary Internet principles
  5. Create Priority API Services. Core Data Services and Profiles should define the minimal data and document types supported by Public APIs
  6. Institute the government as market motivator. ONC should assertively monitor the progress of exchange and implement non-regulatory steps to catalyze the adoption of Public APIs.

According to Politico, Federal health IT leader Karen DeSalvo urged the industry to move from praising interoperability to agreeing about “what should be done and by when and who should do it.” “Data is knocking at the door” waiting to come out, “consumers are pushing at the lock,” and it’s time to decide how interoperability will move forward.