The Federal Health Architecture (FHA) has been working closely with the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) and other federal partners to understand the impact of the Federal Health Strategic Plan on health IT in the federal space. FHA’s federal partners are interested in exploring how to best support and implement the five goals listed in the strategic plan:
- Expand adoption of health IT
- Advance secure and interoperable health information
- Strengthen health care delivery
- Advance the health and well-being of individuals and communities
- Advance research, scientific knowledge and innovation
In order to effectively understand and implement the strategic plan, FHA is working with ONC to develop a Strategic Implementation Guide (SIG) that will support each partner in executing the plan within their own agencies.
Developing the SIG requires collaboration with the federal partners to ensure achievement of the goals defined in the plan. This effort involves FHA working with the federal partners to define the steps needed to achieve interoperability across federal and private organizations within the federal health domain. Federal agencies will be one step closer to achieving interoperability by being able to identify common standards, define shared services, and identify common access mechanisms, as well as other methods for building an interoperable health IT infrastructure.
FHA has conducted a preliminary analysis on key strategic plans of the following federal partners as part of the aforementioned effort:
- Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
- HHS Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO)
- Office of the National Coordinator (ONC)
- Department of Defense (DOD)
- Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
- Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
- Social Security Administration (SSA)
- Indian Health Service (IHS)
This preliminary analysis helps FHA align the partners’ strategies to the strategic plan, and provides guidance to assist partners in executing the plan successfully.
FHA is working in parallel with the development of the strategic plan to release the SIG shortly after the final release of the plan; which is expected to occur around the end of FY2015.
This article was originally published in the FHA February Newsletter, The Pulse.