Hello innovators!
As you may have heard, President Obama last week signed into law the 21st Century Cures Act. While the new law largely focuses on medical research and the approval process for drugs and medical devices, there are several provisions that address patiend identification and patient matching.
The law directs the Government Accountability Office to assess and report on the current state of patient matching. GAO will review not just government activities, but what's happening in the private sector. The law also directs a new health IT federal advisory committee to evaluate how to achieve a health information infrastructure, nationally and locally, that allows for the electronic access, exchange and use of health information technology, including through technology that provides accurate patient information for the correct patient, including exchanging such information, and avoids the duplication of patient records.
Accurate patient identification, which is the primary focus of the NPID Challenge, is a critical piece to the patient matching puzzle and for creating a more robust system of information exchange.
While you charge ahead with developing your solutions, CHIME will continue to educate federal officials on the importance of solving this problem. Thanks for joining us on this journey!
