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Making Electronic Data More Available for Research and Public Health

PROBLEM STATEMENT
• Public health professionals and patient-centered outcomes researchers need better ways to access data from different electronic health record (EHR) systems without posing an additional burden on health care providers.
• Interoperability challenges preclude a consistent and reliable standard method of fulfilling this need, and data exchange from clinical to research and public health settings often remains a labor-intensive, manual process.

GOAL
The goal of the project is to develop a standards-based reference architecture to achieve clinical data exchange between EHR systems and public health and research systems for multiple conditions and uses.

BACKGROUND
In recent years, the maturation of standards and requirements for certification of health information technology (health IT) by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) that underpin many EHRs. Examples such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), the Common Clinical Data Set (CCDS), and open application programming interfaces (API) have created a health IT environment that is ripe for developing scalable and extensible solutions to overcome interoperability challenges. MedMorph seeks to advance public health and patient-centered outcomes by using emerging health data and exchange standards, such as FHIR and Clinical Quality Language (CQL), to develop and implement an interoperable solution that will enable access to clinical data.

TECHNICAL APPROACH
The project will create fully modeled use cases across three distinct areas (e.g., hepatitis C virus [HCV], cancer, healthcare surveys) to inform the design of a scalable and extensible reference architecture to facilitate data exchange for both key patient-centered research questions and surveillance system requirements. This approach aims to minimize the burden on both the senders and receivers of data by providing a common method for obtaining data for research and public health for multiple conditions or uses, which will be documented in implementation guides. The project will also develop a reference implementation to pilot and prove a standards-based interoperable solution for data exchange between EHR systems and public health/research systems.

The CDC has established a Technical Expert Panel (TEP) to inform and guide the interoperable solution and technological approach.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES
• Harmonize with national health IT policies
• Align with data content standards (i.e., CCDS, U.S. Core Data for Interoperability [USCDI])
• Align with interoperability standards (e.g., FHIR, API)
• Build on a policy and data authorities’ architecture
• Reuse instead of de novo development, wherever possible
• Build data capacity in public health and research
• Work towards a flexible solution and “as needed” workflows

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Making Electronic Data More Available for Research and Public Health

Additional MedMorph Information

MedMorph CDC Confluence Page

MedMorph Presentation to CodeX Community of Practice (1/28/2022)