The drug overdose crisis in the United States continues to expand – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, an increase of nearly 15% from 93,655 deaths estimated in 2020.
From 2018 to 2022, as part of efforts to support health IT use in response to the continued increase in drug overdose deaths, ONC and CDC collaborated to develop an interactive tool and resource called the Integration Framework.

The post Using Health IT Integration to Address the Drug Overdose Crisis appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

Registration is open for the 2022 ONC Tech Forum! This year’s event will be held virtually over three consecutive “Forum Fridays” on September 9, 16 and 23.
Come join us to hear from industry, government leaders, and ONC staff about the progress made over the past year in health IT. We’ll discuss how ONC and stakeholders are working together to meet today’s challenges, while laying the groundwork for a future digital health care system that advances health care delivery,

The post Coming Soon: The 2022 Tech Forum is Around the Corner! appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

One of the single greatest social determinants of health is where a patient lives.  It can determine their risk factor for a specific illness or chronic disease, such as asthma, and can also affect much broader measures of well-being and life expectancy. Thus, our ability as healthcare professionals to measure and act on such factors relies heavily on how we accurately capture and manage standardized patient addresses. The standardization of patient address data across healthcare strengthens our ability to measure the social,

The post Project US@ – Advancing Health Equity Requires Better Data appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

ONC is excited to announce “Using Machine Learning Techniques to Enable Health Information Exchange to Support COVID-19-Focused PCOR,” a Patient-Centered Outcomes Research (PCOR) Trust Fund project implementing new technologies and standards to unlock the potential for health information exchanges (HIEs) to support research.
This project will pilot the use of a novel, privacy-preserving machine learning technique called split learning in several HIEs to understand its applicability and suitability for widespread adoption by HIEs.

The post An Innovative Program to Expand the Use of HIE Data for Patient-Centered Outcomes Research appeared first on Health IT Buzz.

How does your division/office fit into ONC?

I work in OTECH’s Technical Strategy and Analysis Division, which is responsible for the technical strategy and analysis around ONC’s key health IT initiatives and policies through external and internal coordination and collaboration, standards development, real-world implementations, piloting technologies, conducting research, data analysis, and monitoring/reporting on health IT trends. 
My team (the Strategic Initiatives Branch) focuses on conducting real-world testing, piloting, and the implementation of standards and technologies in collaboration with other ONC divisions,

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We are pleased to announce the publication of the Approved Standards for 2022 for our annual Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP). The SVAP is designed to make ONC’s Certification program responsive to industry needs by allowing for better alignment to industry efforts for standards advancement, removing barriers for standards development and version updates, and improving the ability for health IT developers to provide relevant, timely, and innovative solutions to their clients.
Beginning August 29,

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