The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) announced that providers and public health agencies in Minnesota and Rhode Island began this month exchanging health information using specifications developed by the Direct Project, an ‘open government’ initiative that calls on cooperative efforts by organizations in the health care and information technology sectors. Other Direct Project pilot programs will also be launched soon in New York, Connecticut, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and California to demonstrate the effectiveness of the streamlined Direct Project approach, which supports information exchange for core elements of patient care and public health reporting.
Other pilot projects to be launched this year include a Tennessee effort with the Veteran’s Administration, local hospitals and CareSpark to provide care to veterans and their families; a New York effort including clinicians in hospital and ambulatory care settings with MedAllies and EHR vendors; a Connecticut effort involving patients, hospitals, ambulatory care settings and a Federally Qualified Health Center with Medical Professional Services, a PHR, and a major reference laboratory; an expansion of the VisionShare immunization data pilot to Oklahoma; a California rural care effort involving patients, hospitals and ambulatory care settings with Redwood MedNet; and an effort in South Texas with a collaboration of hospitals, ambulatory care settings, public health, and community health organizations to improve care to mothers with gestational diabetes and their newborns.
For more information about the Direct Project, please visit http://directproject.org.
For more information about the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, please visit http://healthit.hhs.gov.
