Under a new contract, Accenture will be working with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to develop and manage real-world "use cases" that ONC will use to help in the exchange of data across the healthcare system.
The use cases will focus on patient‑related information--ensuring that care providers' certified EMR systems can handle patient requests for clinical summaries, according to the Reston, Va.-based consulting and technology services company.
Working with ONC and other health stakeholders, Accenture will help identify real‑world needs, and then prioritize them using a governance process. It will then provide documentation of the use cases--supplying information to promote interoperability among providers and systems.
ONC's framework will create a set of tools, processes and reusable components to promote the adoption of interoperability standards. The framework also will support future standards for regional health information organizations, statewide health information exchanges and the Nationwide Health Information Network.
"Standards that all stakeholders in the connected health environment can adopt are essential to achieving the goals of the HITECH legislation and will help drive down costs and increase the quality of and access to healthcare," said Rick Ratliff, global managing director of Accenture's Connected Health IT Solutions, in a statement.
"Those standards will pave the way for fully integrated, patient‑centric healthcare that focuses on prevention and wellness," he said.
To learn more:
- see Accenture's announcement
- read the Healthcare IT News article