Resource Incorporates Feedback from Public Stakeholders and Industry
(Vienna, VA – December 11, 2024) – The Sequoia Project, a non-profit and trusted advocate for nationwide health IT interoperability, today announced the release of the Data Usability Implementation Guide Version 2.0 created by its Interoperability Matters Data Usability Workgroup (DUWG). This resource covers the identified priority use cases that can be readily adopted within health information exchange vendors, implementers, networks, governance frameworks, and testing programs within 18 months.
The final resource spans seven topic categories, including:
- Data Provenance and Traceability of Changes
- Effective Use of Codes in Shared Information
- Reducing Impact of Duplicates
- Data Integrity/Trust
- Data Tagging/Searchability
- Effective Use of Narrative for Usability
- Laboratory Data Interoperability
“After feedback from the industry, many key changes were made to this version of the Implementation Guide, including added guidance for receiving systems, advanced baseline requirements from USCDI V1, and more,” said Didi Davis, vice president, informatics, conformance, and interoperability at The Sequoia Project and DUWG lead. “We hope these additions help further implementation of the implementation guide and advance data usability.”
Some key changes in this final version include:
- Added guidance for receiving systems in addition to sending systems;
- Advancing the baseline requirements from USCDI V1 (Problem, Allergy, Medications, Immunizations ONLY) to all data classes within USCDI V3;
- Expanded guidance to be technology agnostic with added requirements for HL7® FHIR®, HL7 v2.x, and HL7 C-CDA across the topic categories; and
- Added atopic category for laboratory.
The DUWG was launched in October 2020 to develop specific and pragmatic implementation guidance on clinical content for healthcare stakeholders to facilitate health information exchange. The workgroup published its Implementation Guide Version 1.0 in December 2022. The workgroup began its work on the Implementation Guide Version 2.0 in early 2023, and to inform the work, a Laboratory Tiger Team was launched in October 2023 to collect laboratory guidance from industry subject matter experts. The workgroup collected public feedback from stakeholders and Laboratory Tiger Team members on the Version 2 draft earlier this year and incorporated that feedback into this final version.
“There was a lot of hard work and collaboration that went into this DUWG Implementation Guide Version 2,” said Dr. Adam Davis, MD, physician informaticist at Sutter Health and DUWG co-chair.
“We are grateful to those who contributed their time and expertise toward this guide,” said Dr. William Gregg, MD, vice president, clinical data and interoperability, at HCA Healthcare and DUWG co-chair. “We look forward to continuing to identify and solve barriers to improving data usability.”
You can access the implementation guide and learn more about the DUWG and how you can get involved at https://sequoiaproject.org/interoperability-matters/data-usability-workgroup/.
