In his opening address for the agency’s annual meeting on March 29,2021, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT Micky Tripathi stressed prioritizing interoperability, aligning with federal partners and health equity.
Tripathi noted the importance of making interoperability a priority, including joining local, State and regional health information exchange networks fit within nationwide ones, clearly referencing the 2022 launch of a National QHIN to TEFCA standards.
Interoperability rules set out in the 21st Century Cures Act’s will give participants the opportunity to push through most interoperability-related confusion, Tripahi stated, as will wider availability of APIs.
The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, will be the common denominator for low-effort data sharing, said Tripathi, “so a user doesn’t have to think about what network they’re on, they just have interoperability, and they don’t have to think about what the pipes are underneath it”.
Tripathi stressed a focus on “health equity by design,” siting equity as a guiding principle for HER and PHR records system developers.
“That’s a very important part of how we’re thinking about health equity and interoperability and health information in general,” he said. “Making sure health equity is a prime consideration.”