By Kelly A. Briganti, Editorial Director, G2 Intelligence
Last week, Lab & Pathology Insider detailed the results of a study regarding hospitals’ ability to share laboratory results outside their health systems. Spotlighting the issue of laboratory interoperability, the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Library of Medicine (of the National Institutes of Health) also recently held a public workshop seeking input on “promoting semantic interoperability of laboratory data between in vitro diagnostic devices and database systems.” There’s an urgency to improve sharing of laboratory data throughout the health care delivery process and interoperability is a critical issue for laboratories who are at the center of health care decision making.
As part of its efforts to promote and oversee health IT and interoperability, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has launched a new complaint process for reporting health-IT related concerns or complaints. A simple one-page complaint can be completed online, anonymously, to report problems regarding IT certification, information blocking, Health IT safety, usability, privacy and security and clinical quality measures. The complaint can be accessed on the HealthIT.gov website.
For more information about the laboratory’s role in interoperability, see the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report issued last year, “Ensuring the Safety and Effectiveness of Laboratory Data in Electronic Health Record Systems.”