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In my first three Connected Blog posts in this series, The Federal Health IT Strategic Plan and Third Party Risk, Managed Services, and Artificial Intelligence, I examined how the ONC's 2024-2030 Federal IT Strategic Plan provides the framework for how public and private organizations will optimize Healthcare IT priorities across the continuum of care. Public Comments on the plan closed May 28, 2024, and at the time of this blog publication, the final version of the plan was not yet available. In its final iteration, The Federal IT Strategic Plan will have lasting impact to each of us as consumers of healthcare and for the more than 22 million healthcare workers in the United States.

The four goals of the 2024-2030 plan are to:

• Promote Health and Wellness
• Enhance the Delivery and Experience of Care
• Accelerate Research and Innovation
• Connect the Health System with Health Data

In this final post in a four-part series, I'll review how the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan intersects with public policy, governance, security, access, and data sharing.

Goal 4: Connect the Health System with Health Data

There's broad agreement that patient data, with rigid privacy and security framework, should be shared for better patient outcomes. It's through those more favorable outcomes that we impact the greater population. At scale, this is how our healthcare system is reformed such that the U.S. no longer spend $4.5 trillion in healthcare, roughly 17% of the US GDP. Certainly, the success and failure of the U.S. healthcare system can't be pinned solely on the nuances of data sharing, but that it figures so prominently in the plan implies that in a best future-state, costs are mitigated and more importantly, lives are saved.

The plan goes into considerable detail supporting nationwide interoperability, and ensuring access in underserved communities that are often without the financial advantages to build these platforms. TEFCA, The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, is the standard for "universal governance, policy and technical floor" for the future of electronic health information sharing. You can expect language such as "TEFCA certified" or "meets TEFCA requirements" to infiltrate healthcare IT vernacular as public and private sector organizations begin adopting this framework.

These systems, both as they exist today, and the architecture of the future aren't built using an online configuration tool with a nifty ROI calculator attached. Modern infrastructure allows any healthcare or healthcare adjacent organization the tools and knowledge to build highly flexible, scalable, agile, secure IT environments that meet the challenges that will advance secure data sharing for health systems. Connection has deep technical expertise and takes a highly consultative approach to these challenges, co-developing solutions with our partners and customers. Learn more about how our modern infrastructure and data center solutions and services are empowering organizations like yours.

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