This transcription is provided by artificial intelligence. We believe in technology but understand that even the most intelligent robots can sometimes get speech recognition wrong.

Today in Health it, the story is ONC Leader, Mickey T's Tips for Interoperability success. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in Health IT at channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current. And engaged VMware has been committed to our mission of providing relevant content to health IT professionals since the start.

They recently completed an executive study with MIT on the top Healthcare trends, shaping it, resilience, covering how the pandemic drove unique transformation in healthcare. This is just one of the many resources they have for healthcare professionals. For this, and several other great content pieces, check out vmware.com/go.

Slash healthcare. Alright, here's today's story. This is from EHR Intelligence. . And the title of it is ONC. Leader Tripathy offers tips for Interoperability Rule Success. April 22nd, Christopher Jason was the author, the Office of National Coordinator for Health. It is gearing up to help organizations succeed with all phases of interoperability, rule focus mainly on moving a range of health.

It levers in unison in both the short and long term, according to the newly appointed national coordinator for health. It. Mic Tripathy, PhD, MMP. There you go. There's this whole range of levers that we have Tripathy said in an interview. Some of them are soft, tiny levers, and some of them are really hard levers.

Yet Repath wants healthcare organizations to look at the larger picture with several compliance dates on the horizon within the next 18 months. What I don't want is those regulatory dates to end up becoming a pace at which the industry progresses. Because if we were going to wait 18 months for a more robust fire based capability, that's just not a good answer.

In a fast moving space where you have business models and technology moving at internet speed, as it were, he explained the first point I wanna make before we get to the so what. Is, we have said this on several occasions. This interoperability rule is bipartisan. It is moving forward, and you're seeing the same fervor behind it with mic tripathy as you saw in the previous administration.

As you saw in the administration before that, and the administration before that this is coming. This is the future of healthcare. It is not going to change. So that's just one of the things that I want to lodge in people's heads. That there's not gonna be an all of a sudden about face. This administration feels the same way about interoperability as every administration, and quite frankly, as most Americans feel about interoperability, get the record into my hands.

I may not know what to do with it today, but there will be an innovation community that is created around me having my data. That gives me more intelligence, more options, more tools to make me a healthier person and build a healthier community. Alright, the story goes on. Our policy team and our clinical team meet every week on a proactive basis with stakeholder groups such as clinicians, providers, CEOs, and others to educate as much as we can.

Respond to questions that we get and to take as many questions from them as we can to be able to make sure that we're being as responsible as possible for them. He explained it's just coordinated effort across with using all the tools that we have at hand. Pathy added that although April 5th provided healthcare stakeholders with the information blocking regulations that's currently limited to structured data.

Under the US CDI US Core Data for Interoperability, that's a more limited group of patient data that healthcare organizations are beholden to make available in 18 months, the floodgates will open making healthcare organizations responsible for sharing that structured data as well as some unstructured data, presenting a bigger challenge to Paty said.

I think what he's saying here is, look, you're putting all the things in place, you're having the meetings with the clinicians, you're having the meetings with administration, you're determining. What data, what tool sets, and how to make it available through the APIs. You might as well pretend as if it was all required and do the work in unison to make all that data available.

According to tripathy, healthcare organizations must establish what types of patient data to make available and how they're going to make those data sets available. All right, I'm gonna go down the article a little bit. He goes on to say, however, there is no clear cut definition that explains the elements of the electronic patient data He noted.

Healthcare organizations leaders will have to define patient data, then decide how that definition matches the requirement and how the data will be made available. From an inbound perspective. Healthcare leaders will also have to decide how providers will be able to get access to patient data from outside provider organizations.

And what they will do with it. TRO described, that's a significant health information exchange question. Furthermore, leaders will have to decide which health IT tools will be needed, which process will be in place, and if increased unstructured data access is essential for their specific healthcare organization.

All right. He goes on later. A recent report said Current application programming interfaces need increased standardization and tools to expand research and data extraction use. Specifically, ONC said there needs to be more standardization and better tools for configuring, extracting, and mapping data across separate healthcare organizations.

Researchers also need to be more aware. Of and educated about FHIR and FHIR bulk data access APIs to utilize full API potential. When I read a paragraph like that, I immediately think there's an opportunity, right? There's an opportunity for innovation. There's an opportunity for a company. ONC said there needs to be more standardization.

There's a gap that exists for some entrepreneurial organization to walk through the 21st Century Cures Act is going to help this process in long said, we've got a paradigm right now. Where analytics is focused on those structured quality measures and structured reporting based on data that is made available in a standardized way.

The ONC had added the organization plans to use the next 18 months to get stakeholders accustomed to patient data exchange within structured limits defined under U-S-C-D-I. Once stakeholders have a better grasp on standardized patient data definitions, once the 18 months is over, it is . Everything. It's text notes, transcriptions, and other kinds of documents.

The only way that we'll be able to get our arms around that is using algorithms, machine learning, and other kinds of approaches, such as NLP, natural Language processing to be able to take advantage of on behalf of patient, on behalf of better quality, to be able to take advantage of that broader, comprehensive information that's available.

He goes on to say, as we all know, 18 months might seem like a long time, but it's right around the corner and that's the key message that they're trying to get out. Alright, what's my so what for that? As you know, we do a so what with every one of these stories, why does it matter? Why do we need to pay attention?

Here is how these regulations play out. Every time it feels to me like it's every time it feels like it's Groundhog Day. Regulation set within a, I don't know, 18 month to two year window. ONC does a communication blitz to get the word out. They do listening tours. They provide guidance. A professional organization or two will lobby on behalf of the hospitals to delay or stop the interoperability rule.

Whatever it happens to be. There will be a little change. There'll be a flurry of articles, modern healthcare, Beckers, you name it. Talking about, oh, the overwhelming amount of work that hospitals have and how hard it is. Chime will then publish some papers and tools to help systems to adhere to the regulation.

As time approaches, we'll hear the reasons why health systems weren't given enough time, even more. Then the date will come and go. Articles will be written about non-compliance. ONC will be lenient at first with enforcement, which lulls organizations into a sense of comfort. Then once ONC realizes that few move in healthcare without carrots and sticks, they'll pick one or two large health systems, make a compliance statement with a big splash fine.

And at that point everyone looks at it and says, wow, they must be serious. And then work proceeds in earnest and we establish a new baseline. I hope I'm not right, and maybe I've gotten a little cynical with this, but I've seen it play out too many times, but again, in hopes that I'm not right. Let's go to the practical takeaway from this, and that is today it's under it's structured data, right?

Even the word compliance. I, I hate, I, it's just the wrong word. Have a working example of using the data with partners on behalf of the community for that is what we do in health it. All right, that's all for today. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note.

They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com, or wherever you listen to podcast Apple, Google Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. . You get the picture. We are everywhere. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders, VMware Hillrom, Starbridge Advisors, McAfee and Aruba Networks.

Thanks for listening. That's all for now.