ONC Launches New Clinical Quality Framework Initiative

 

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has launched a new initiative focused on "harmonizing the standards for clinical decision support and electronic clinical quality measurement," according to a March 20 blog by Doug Fridsma, M.D., ONC Director of the Office of Science and Technology.

Called the Clinical Quality Framework, Fridsma said the initiative builds on the work of the public-private Health eDecision (HeD) project established in June 2012 which "was able to achieve significant progress in standards harmonization for Clinical Decision Support" as well as "created three implementation guides and authored six HL7 standards with the guidance of the HL7 Clinical Decision Support Work Group."  

Part of the ONC Standards & Interoperability Framework, HeD was created to enable interoperable clinical decision support with the aim of developing and validating standards to be made available for potential inclusion in future EHR certification requirements. The HeD initiative is ending on March 27 with the work being furthered through the new CQF program.

ONC will kick off the CQF initiative today at 12 noon ET in a one-hour Web meeting. Details for participation are here.