The ONC Health IT Curriculum Returns to Life

Long-time readers of this blog know that a substantial part of my work life around 2010-2013 involved developing the health information technology curriculum for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). I posted in this blog about the project when it was funded as well as it came to an end. As the project was winding down, one of my laments was that there was no further funding to maintain the curriculum. This did not mean it was still not a valuable resource, as many educators were continuing to use it and enhance it locally. We were fortunately able to find a home for the materials in the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Knowledge Center.

I was pleased earlier this year when ONC announced a funding opportunity to update the materials and add four new areas of content relevant for improved healthcare delivery: population health, care coordination, new care delivery and payments models, and value-based care. I am even more thrilled to report that OHSU was one of seven institutions awarded nearly a million dollars in funding to carry out this update and enhancement.

The funding is for more than just updating the curriculum and adding the new topic areas. After the curriculum revision is complete, ONC will work with the awardees to establish a program to train incumbent healthcare employees whose roles, duties, or functions involve health IT. The training will be completed in five days or less to accommodate professionals with restricted schedules and will be offered in various settings, such as online, in-person, or train-the-trainer programs. In total, awardees will collectively train about 6000 incumbent healthcare workers (about 1000 per grantee) in team-based care environments, such as long-term care facilities, patient-centered medical homes, accountable care organizations, hospitals, safety net clinics, rural health, and other settings.

I am certain that I will have more to say periodically about the project and its progress. I am also confident that it will help expand capacity of health IT across the country.