Although the ONC is doing well to address issues in interoperability, industry coalitions should lead the charge for interoperability, according to the American Medical Association.
The AMA is a founding member of Carequality, an industry initiative of Healtheway that aims to establish a common interoperability framework for data exchange. The organization wrote in a statement that the ONC should allow Carequality and other industry efforts to flourish to best support physicians.
"The AMA has offered numerous solutions to both ONC and Congress on ways to improve data sharing that we hope will be further considered," said Steven J. Stack, MD, AMA president elect, in a statement. "We continue to support ONC's effort to work with other agencies to address this problem, including clarifying security and privacy laws and enhancing transparency."
Carequality links health IT systems to allow information exchange. Health IT major players eClinicalWorks and Epic recently announced their interoperability on Carequality. Multiple other health IT vendors are interoperable with CommonWell Health Alliance services, including Cerner, McKesson and Greenway Health.