The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has awarded $1.5 million in grants to seven programs using standards-based solutions to improve the flow of health information.
After announcing the High Impact Pilot and Standards Exploration Award funding opportunities at the Health Datapalooza conference in the District of Columbia last May, ONC received more than 35 applications. The winners were selected on factors such as a program's ability to address health IT challenges, scalability, potential impact and creativity, according to announcement.
Two of the four High Impact Pilot awardees include:
- A collaboration between RxREVU, a Denver-based prescription intelligence company, and Banner Health System using the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard to share information to reduce pharmacy spending and provide information on medication adherence
- A University of Utah program in which community primary care physicians and vascular surgeons using a common electronic health record can share information through a closed-loop surgical referrals dashboard application
Two of the three Standards Exploration Awards winners include:
- The Arkansas Office of Health Information Technology, which will implement a bi-directional health information exchange with behavioral health providers
- Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, which will research the cost of integrating clinical and research data within the EHR to make use of data for both more effective
Awardees are expected to report back on results of their programs in September 2017.