ONC releases final rule updating Health IT Certification Program

The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Dec. 13 released a final rule updating certification requirements for health information technology developers under its Health IT Certification Program. According to OCR, the final rule establishes transparency requirements for artificial intelligence and other predictive algorithms; adopts the United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 3 as the new baseline standard for the program; revises certain information blocking definitions and exceptions; and requires participating developers to report certain metrics to the program.

“The AHA worked with the Healthcare Confidentiality Coalition (HCC) and shared their concerns about the impact of data segmentation requirements in the proposed rule,” said Stephen Hughes, AHA’s director of health information technology policy. “We also supported their comments regarding the benefits of reasonable algorithmic transparency as a critical first step to ensure we are balancing the tremendous potential power of these tools by providing reasonable guardrails to ensure patient safety and equity. We look forward to attending all the ONC’s information sessions this January and working together with the HCC on a more thorough review of the final rule.”