On Monday, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced the soft launch of an initiative that will use metadata tagging to create patient consent management controls, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 9/19).
The project -- called the Data Segmentation Initiative -- aims to help health care providers exchange portions of an electronic health record while keeping certain sensitive information separate (Goedert, Health Data Management, 9/20).
Background
The initiative is one of two pilot programs that ONC is sponsoring to test recommendations on metadata standards for health information exchange. Earlier this month, ONC launched the Query Health Initiative to establish standards for requesting population health data from widely distributed sources (Sullivan, Government Health IT, 9/20).
The two pilots follow the release of an advance notice of proposed rulemaking detailing ONC's initial views on metadata standards. ONC is accepting comments on the proposed rule through Sept. 23 (CMIO, 9/20).
The push for metadata standards stems from a December 2010 report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, which recommended developing and using a universal exchange language to promote health data exchange and increase the privacy and security of information (iHealthBeat, 8/19).
Data Segmentation Initiative
ONC's Office of the Chief Privacy Officer and the Office of Standards and Interoperability will lead the Data Segmentation Initiative, which is scheduled to formally launch on Oct. 5 (Modern Healthcare, 9/19).
Joy Pritts, ONC's chief privacy officer, said the initiative is "open for anyone to join," adding, "This community will meet frequently by webinar and teleconference, and [have] access to a Wiki page to facilitate discussion and the harmonization of data standards" (Health Data Management, 9/20).
Pritts added that interested entities can sign up to participate in the initiative on ONC's Standards and Interoperability Framework website (Government Health IT, 9/20).