Office of National Coordination for Health Information Technology

Office of National Coordination for Health Information Technology

ONC refers to an entity that is meant to ensure that it oversees the development of the health information technology of a nation. Besides, the body helps in the promotion of its infrastructure (Zayas-Cabán et al., 2020). The role of health information technology is to support the management of information in the computerized system. Therefore, in this case, ONC helps prevent medical errors by replacing paper records with electronic records. In other words, it helps increase the efficiency as well as productivity of health care nationally. Despite new developments introduced by the ONC for health information technology, the office is faced with numerous barriers to their implementation.

Today, ONC has joined hand with precision Medicine Initiative, something that will ensure that patients get access to more personalized care approaches. Besides, the current status of ONC provides that patients can gain access to their electronic information on their health, and it supports provider needs. Additionally, the release of the 21st-century cure act ensures it addresses the issue of information blockage as well as advancing innovation. In other words, the new developments in ONC for health information technology include information blocking practices and increased patient safety. Consequently, access to patient’s information has been secured, and more innovative methods have been introduced. Moreover, there has been a reduction in the burden of administrative providers concerning the use of health information technology.

The various barriers to implementation include insufficient resources for information sharing between the providers of health care. Besides, some of the health business models used today make no significant improvement in the quality of data related to patient care. Consequently, there have been challenges associated with merging health information technology with the program requirement. In other words, the dynamic nature of health care programs makes it difficult for health information technology to comply. Finally, ONC has faced barriers to interoperability of health information technology.

References

Zayas-Cabán, T., Abernethy, A. P., Brennan, P. F., Devaney, S., Kerlavage, A. R., Ramoni, R., & White, P. J. (2020). Leveraging the health information technology infrastructure to advance federal research priorities. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(4), 647-651.