Objective: The 21st Century Cures Act Final Rule requires that certified electronic health records (EHRs) be able to export a patient's full set of electronic health information (EHI). This requirement becomes more powerful if EHI exports use interoperable application programming interfaces (APIs). We sought to advance the ecosystem, instantiating policy desiderata in a working reference implementation based on a consensus design.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology final rule implementing the interoperability and information blocking provisions of the 21st Century Cures Act requires support for two SMART (Substitutable Medical Applications, Reusable Technologies) application programming interfaces (APIs) and instantiates Health Level Seven International (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) as a lingua franca for health data. We sought to assess the current state and near-term plans for the SMART/HL7 Bulk FHIR Access API implementation across organizations including electronic health record vendors, cloud vendors, public health contractors, research institutions, payors, FHIR tooling developers, and other purveyors of health information technology platforms. We learned that many organizations not required through regulation to use standardized bulk data are rapidly implementing the API for a wide array of use cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe 21st Century Cures Act requires that certified health information technology have an application programming interface (API) giving access to all data elements of a patient's electronic health record, "without special effort". In the spring of 2020, the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) published a rule-21st Century Cures Act Interoperability, Information Blocking, and the ONC Health IT Certification Program-regulating the API requirement along with protections against information blocking. The rule specifies the SMART/HL7 FHIR Bulk Data Access API, which enables access to patient-level data across a patient population, supporting myriad use cases across healthcare, research, and public health ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Substitutable Medical Apps and Reusable Technology (SMART) Health IT project launched in 2010 to facilitate the development of medical apps that are scalable and substitutable. SMART defines an open application programming interface (API) specification that enables apps to connect to electronic health record systems and data warehouses without custom integration efforts. The SMART-enabled version of the Meducation app, developed by Polyglot, has been implemented at scores of hospitals and clinics in the United States, nation-wide.
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