The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) on Monday released its 2017 draft of the Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) for public comment.
“By providing the industry with a single, public list of the standards and implementation specifications that can be consistently used to fulfill specific clinical interoperability needs, we hope to spur more seamless and secure flow of information across the health system,” Steven Posnack, director of the Office of Standards and Technology, and Chris Muir, director of HIT Infrastructure and Innovation Division at the Office of Standards & Technology, wrote in a press release about the draft.
One major change between the 2016 and 2017 versions is the transition of the document to a Web-based resource with greater interactive potential.
“Our goal is to shift the ISA experience from a static PDF to an interactive, wiki-style product that stakeholders can more fully engage with and shape,” Posnack and Muir wrote. “This will enable more efficient, closer to real-time updates and comments as well as other valuable features, such as hyperlinks to projects in the Interoperability Proving Ground that are using a particular ISA-referenced standard.”
Other changes include the discontinued use of the term “best available,” the addition of “Applicable Starter Sets,” and better representation of standards for operations and standards for operation values pairings.
The public comment period will run into mid-October, and the final 2017 ISA will be released in December 2016.
