Efforts set for launch this fall should define standards for public health data queries made to electronic health records and make headway on segmenting private data in EHRs, says the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.

In an Aug. 17 blog post, ONC Director Farzard Motashari says a planned "query health" initiative will define and deliver standards for distributed population health queries--searches made across multiple EHRs or community health records. The initiative will test searches made against a standard clinical information model, Motashari says, with the ultimate aim being to enable population analyses "to inform both clinical and payment strategies for their health systems and practice."

Meanwhile a data segmentation initiative will evaluate standards for sharing individually identifiable health information, including metadata privacy attribute standards earlier recommended by the Heath IT Standards Committee, Motashari says.

Indiana-based healthcare researcher Regenstrief Institute is already piloting a metadata-based capture, index and search tool for patient summary care records, Motashari says. Regenstreif's approach is to use middleware and "improved metadata" to capture data flows from legacy systems, he adds, and it should allow queries at the data element level. The institute also has under development a user interface to allow patients to place controls over the sharing of their information, he says.

Pilots in other states, including Montana, will generate query-able patient care summaries from EHRs, "creating a rich environment to test metadata standards," Motashari says.

ONC released on Aug. 5 an advance notice of proposed rulemaking for three proposed categories of metadata standards attached to patient care summary.  

For more:
- read Mostashari's Aug. 17 blog post

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