ONC is leading a project to advance high-priority health data and metadata standards that support findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles and that can be implemented or required by federal agencies or other relevant stakeholders.
Electronic health record systems contain vast amounts of detailed clinical data. However, a lack of data and metadata standards can make this information difficult to use for clinical care and research.
Similar challenges arise with the increasing number and types of technologies that generate health data but that are not connected to the healthcare system, such as wearable devices, sensors, and trackers. These technologies do not use consistent data and metadata standards, which limits their usefulness in care delivery and research.
Establishing standards can enable effective and efficient data management and aggregation, which will improve accuracy across different research and clinical studies and make it easier for researchers to interpret and use the data.
The Advancing Health Data and Metadata Standards project seeks to identify, develop, and test high-impact data and metadata standards that support FAIR principles by:
- Understanding the current landscape and gaps for current and emerging health data and metadata standards;
- Identifying and prioritizing, with expert and federal partner input, current and emerging high-priority electronic health data and metadata standards ripe for advancement;
- Accelerating efforts to develop, harmonize, and test these high-priority health data and metadata standards; and
- Recommending additional health data and metadata standards for future development.