Today at the 2016 Health Datapalooza conference, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced two new funding opportunities totaling $1.5 million, to advance common standards: the High Impact Pilots (HIP) and Standards Exploration Awards (SEA).
Program Overview
The program is intended to catalyze the implementation of standards and technology that can be used to:
– Improve the sharing of health information among health care stakeholders
– Improve care delivery
– Demonstrate how health IT can positively impact patient experience.
Awardees under these two programs will need to be ready to hit the ground running and produce results within one year.
Through this funding, award recipients in each program will need to generate evidence regarding whether their specific standards and technology are ready for widespread use and larger investments.
– Priority Categories include: (1) Comprehensive Medication Management; (2) Laboratory Data Exchange; (3) Care Coordination; and (4) a Self-Identified category that allows the applicant to identify another area they believe the advancement of interoperable standards could be demonstrated.
– The Impact Dimensions applicants can choose from are: (1) Practice Efficiency; (2) Clinical Quality; (3) Cost Efficiency; (4) Patient Experience; (5) Safety; (6) Privacy and Security; and (7) Interoperable Exchange.
“We have made significant progress in the flow of health information, but we still have work to do to ensure different systems speak the same language,” said National Coordinator for HIT Karen DeSalvo, MD. “Today’s announcement will advance the use of common, interoperable standards, particularly for key pieces of data like medications and lab results.”
The total funding available for HIP awards is $1.25 million (no less than 3 awards and no more than 7 awards are expected). The total funding available for SEA awards is $250,000 (no less than 3 awards and no more than 5 awards are expected).
– Applicants interested in the Standard Exploration Awards funding opportunity are encouraged to attend the Information Session from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET on May 26
– Applicants interested in the High Impact Pilot Information Page are encouraged to attend the Information Session from 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET on May 23
The FOAs are open from now until July 8, 2016. Letters of intent are due by June 10th.
