Meaningful use stage 3 should focus on achieving interoperability, using public application programming interfaces to do so, according to a report from the ONC's JASON task force.
A 2013 JASON report took aim at the country's lack of progress toward interoperable health records, asserting meaningful use stages 1 and 2 had not achieved true interoperability "in any practical sense." The report postulates the path to interoperability is through a central architecture based on open APIs and other advanced applications rather than regulatory interventions to make disparate EHR systems share data.
On Wednesday, members of the JASON task force announced their agreement with the report's main argument. While the task force members believe the JASON report did not give the healthcare industry enough credit for the level of interoperability achieved thus far, they see a public infrastructure based on APIs as the best way to achieve interoperability.
Therefore, the task force recommends meaningful use stage 3 focus on interoperability and include certification and incentives for inclusion of a public API in the next edition of CEHRT as well as provisions for the development of data-sharing networks and related architecture.
This may require delaying provisions of stage 3, according to the task force. "Leveraging meaningful use stage 3 will require acceleration of standards definition and technical development on the private side, and adjustment of the meaningful use stage 3 rule-making process on the public side, including the potential need for delay or staggering of meaningful use stage 3 incentives, to account for the time needed to standardize and then implement the core data services of the public API," wrote the task force.
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