Epic has introduced new capabilities supporting Version 3 of the United States Core Data for Interoperability. They're available more than a year before the federally required December 2025 date to support the new data set. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The new data elements – tribal affiliation, disability status, caregiver relationships, preferred language and more – of USCDI v3 are now part of Epic's set of application programing interfaces, the vendor announced Monday.

Available to developers at no charge, healthcare apps can now receive the new data elements that are aimed at increasing personalized care. 

"As an example use case, a health coach app could proactively connect a patient to a food bank or transportation assistance program based on data that the app can now receive," said Mike Pontillo, implementation executive at Epic, in a statement.

The APIs for accessing all USCDI v3 data elements are available in Epic’s online library, which the EHR vendor said contains more than 700 industry-standard interoperability technologies. 

Epic said that the connections supported more than 500 billion data exchanges in the last year.

THE LARGER TREND

The Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare Technology completed its final health IT certification rule, which revised several program certification criteria and set a timeline for raising the baseline version of the USCDI from Version 1 to Version 3 by January 1, 2026.

"The adoption of new and revised standards and criteria in this final rule will facilitate interoperability through standardized health information and functionality, which will lead to better care and health outcomes for patients while reducing burden and costs," said ONC (now known as ASTP/ONC) upon publication of HTI-1 in the Federal Register.

While certain data elements like sex, sexual orientation and gender identity are included, USCDI v3 does not include demographic values for nonbinary sex identification. 

Many in the health IT industry took issue with the implementation timeframe to comply with various requirements in the info-blocking rules, saying there wasn't sufficient time to complete the amount of development work needed by the deadlines.

ONC finalized USCDI version 4 this past year and then received more than 60 submissions recommending new data elements and hundreds of comments in its draft of USCDI version 5.

The final version was released in July and added 16 new data elements, including Sex Parameter for Clinical Use, and two new classes, Orders and Observations, ONC said. 

SPCU is intended to provide a mechanism for "clinical observations typically associated with the designation of male and female," where "multiple instances of this data element for a single person" can be used. 

Future expansions Epic APIs will support USCDI v4 and v5, the company said

ON THE RECORD

"Reliable access to social drivers of health will make a real difference in people’s lives," Pontillo said.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.