With a heightened focus on health equity throughout our work, ONC has adopted the concept of “health equity by design.” Along those lines, health IT can, and should, be used to better identify and mitigate disparities while enhancing opportunities for underrepresented populations. In 2019, under the Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) for Health IT program, ONC funded the University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School (Dell Med) to design,

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When talking about artificial intelligence (AI) today, people are usually referring to predictive models—often driven by machine learning (ML) techniques—that “learn” from historic data and make predictions, recommendations, or classifications (outputs) which inform or drive decision making. The power of ML is in its enormous flexibility. You can build a model to predict or recommend just about anything, and we have seen it transform many sectors.
The potential for ML and related technologies in health care is exciting.

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The same basic technology that can predict what movie you might want to watch, what song you might want to listen to, or what item you might want to buy online, can also predict the onset of diseases, forecast costs of care, and recommend treatment options for your doctors, nurses, and pharmacists.
Algorithms are not new to health care. Indeed, an important and long-standing part of our Health Information Technology (Health IT) Certification Program has included Clinical Decision Support (CDS) certification criterion covering “rules-based” algorithms and software systems that use rules derived by experts,

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Editor’s Note: On April 14, 2022 at the ONC Annual Meeting, San Diego Health Connect will be demo-ing their project in the exhibit hall.
How can we improve the ability of patient to convey their preferences regarding access to and use of their electronic medical record information? San Diego Health Connect – a recipient of an ONC Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health IT (LEAP) program award – developed a scalable consent framework for electronic health records to help answer this question.

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More and more individuals are using digital data to make informed decisions about their health. Whether it be health information collected by wearable devices or lab test results in a patient portal, individuals can now access, share, and use electronic health data to manage their health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of individuals taking a proactive approach to accessing to their electronic health information so that they can be better prepared in advance of an emergency.

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Does the neighborhood I live in affect my health? How am I going to be able to see the specialist without a car? Can I share blood pressure and blood sugar readings I take at home with my doctor so she can monitor how I’m doing? These critical questions have helped to drive precision medicine research as well as improving care management and coordination.
While researchers and providers seek to capture and integrate insightful patient data from non-clinical settings and understand how social and environmental issues impact health,

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