“As part of ONC’s ongoing charge to coordinate across federal and industry stakeholders, we determined it was necessary to adjust our Standards Version Advancement Process (SVAP) timeline. Although it may seem like this process has been around for a while, it’s still brand new and we’ve been looking at ways to optimize how the process aligns with other standards development work in the community. The changes we’ve made will help ensure timely publication of implementation specifications central to our cadence for new versions of USCDI.”
“Back in 2020, as part of the ONC Cures Act Final Rule, ONC established an annual Standards Version Advancement Process to enable health IT developers in the ONC Health IT Certification Program to voluntarily update their products to incorporate national coordinator-approved, newer versions of adopted standards and implementation specifications. This supports certified health IT developers and permits them to adopt and implement newer standards versions and support their clinical customers in nationwide, interoperable health information exchange, via this ongoing, collaborative process.”
“While the standards community has enthusiastically supported the SVAP concept, its real-world use is new. ONC’s Health IT Certification Program includes dozens of standards developed by numerous organizations with their own standards development activities and timelines. Additionally, ONC has finalized the first new version of the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) version 2 and initiated the process to identify USCDI version 3…”
“Change to Current SVAP
The most immediate change for the public to note is that the current SVAP comment period, due to end September 30th, was extended to May 2, 2022. Additionally, the announcement of next version of approved standards for SVAP will be delayed by approximately 6 months, from January 2022 to June 2022. We don’t expect this to cause any delays in implementation by health IT developers, but rather the extra time will benefit in further maturing the implementation specifications through additional testing and pilot activities…” Read the full article here.
Source: Aligning with Standards Development Community: The New Cycle for Standards Version Advancement Process – By Avinash Shanbhag and Jeff Smith, October 15, 2021. ONC Health IT Buzz.
