-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
A-I
J-Z
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
Regions
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
-
Middle East & Africa
-
Americas
-
Asia & Oceania
-
Europe
Europe
- Adriatic
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Czech Republic
- Deutschland
- España
- France
- Greece
- Hungary
- Ireland
- Israel
- Italia
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more -
Middle East & Africa
EMEA Thought Leadership
Developing IQVIA’s positions on key trends in the pharma and life sciences industries, with a focus on EMEA.
Learn more
WHO WE HELP
-
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
-
Emerging Biopharma
-
MedTech
-
Financial Institutions
-
Government and Public Health
-
Health Plans
-
Hospital and Health Systems
-
Insurers and Risk
-
Medical Specialty and Patient Advocacy
Pharmaceutical Manufacturers
Harness unparalleled healthcare data, advanced analytics, and cutting-edge technologies with our expertise to accelerate the development and commercialization of innovative medicines, enhancing patient lives.
Discover MorePharmaceutical Manufacturers
Emerging Biopharma (Global page)
Boost your innovation with IQVIA's expert team. Our comprehensive solutions integrate top-tier insights, technology, and expertise to maximize your asset's success in a competitive landscape.
Discover InnovationsMedTech
Navigating MedTech's unique landscape: U.S. decision-making now rests with GPOs, IDNs, and payers, who demand solid value proof through rigorous outcomes analyses and pricing scrutiny.
Explore MedTechMedTech
Financial Institutions
Invest in healthcare with confidence. Stay ahead of pharma and medical device trends using real-time, high-quality data. Access market insights, historical sales, prescription trends, and emerging product information for informed, risk-reduced decisions.
Access InsightsGovernment and Public Health
Unlock deeper health insights with unmatched data and innovative technology to enhance decision-making for your essential government programs.
Unlock InnovationsGovernment and Public Health
Health Plans
Accelerate digital innovation with our data-driven expertise in data science and healthcare, optimizing business processes for smarter decisions.
Navigate Health PlansHospital and Health Systems
Leverage digital innovation to cut costs, boost efficiency, and elevate patient engagement, all while enhancing quality and health outcomes.
Streamline DecisionsHospital and Health Systems
Insurers and Risk
Enhance your ability to evaluate and forecast population risk swiftly and accurately by integrating unmatched data, expertise, and technology.
Uncover More
Medical Specialty and Patient Advocacy
Transform into a data-driven organization that enhances your specialty and showcases value to your members through digital transformation.
Explore NowU.S. PROGRESS POINT
A curation of IQVIA's best thinking on topics and trends driving change, disruption, and progress in the United States healthcare market.
LEARN MOREBLOGS, WHITE PAPERS & CASE STUDIES
Explore our library of insights, thought leadership, and the latest topics & trends in healthcare.
DISCOVER INSIGHTS
PODCASTS
"Discover the future through our enlightening podcasts available in the United States.
EXPLORE PODCASTS
Blog
USCDI: How It May Benefit Patient Advocacy Organizations and Medical Societies
Jan 09, 2023
Accessing deidentified patient data from electronic health records (EHRs) has historically been challenging, and controlled by EHR vendors. The US 21st Century Cures Act (Cures Act) resulted in new regulations that fundamentally change how patient data is accessed and repurposed. In a major step forward, the United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) aims to improve interoperability of various medical data systems and enable data exchange between stakeholders such as physicians, insurers, labs, registries, and patients themselves.
Below we take a look at the current interoperability environment, and considerations for advocacy groups and medical specialty societies that may want to work with an external partner in this area.
What is USCDI?
The USCDI provides standards for data creation and formatting, defining the data classes and elements that EHRs must be able to share – and creating a basic expectation that healthcare data can be exchanged freely and openly, via a non-proprietary mechanism.1 USCDI data elements represent individual concepts, such as medication, allergy, procedure, or health concern. These sets of health data must be expressed in Certified Health IT modules and made available for exchange using certain exchange standards, such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) or Consolidated-Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA).
USCDI focuses on core data requirements for patient data access and certain other exchange and interoperability uses. USCDI is “content exchange standard agnostic,” with no specification of how and to what extent its elements are included in FHIR or C-CDA.
While there remain differing viewpoints on the utility of the USCDI, release and adoption have significantly accelerated interoperability. Several attempts have been made to regulate the flow of health information for EHR integration, including the use of Health Level 7 (HL7) with FHIR. HL7 refers to the seventh level of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) seven-layer communications model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI). This is the application level, interfaces directly with and performs common application services for the application processes.
Complying With and Gaining Advantage from USCDI
Patient Advocacy Groups
Patient advocacy groups (PAGs) will likely benefit greatly from patient-mediated data access, where individuals are able to choose to share their data with PAGs, medical specialty society registries, researchers or others. Patient permission to share data, including patient-reported outcomes, can be granted through the provider’s portal, via a patient-facing mobile app or a direct request to the physician’s office. Integration vendors can achieve this sharing via FHIR APIs. This is likely to be particularly helpful in PAGs’ rare or ultra-rare disease registries, where medical centers may be reluctant to take on the work required to share data from one or a few patients.
Medical Specialty Societies
Medical specialty society (MSS) registries aim to examine performance metrics and quality data, and to provide feedback comparing healthcare organizations with national averages, or report to CMS on performance measures. Historically, it has been challenging for MSSs to obtain high quality data from institutions for these registries. With the advent of the USCDI and FHIR APIs, societies’ registries are benefiting from the ability to interface with health systems to gain access to data sources, with automation helping to minimize the effort required from site IT teams.
The United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) will improve patient data access and interoperability of medical data systems, with free and open data exchange between healthcare stakeholders. While there remain limitations to this exchange at present, there is scope for significant advantage for both patient advocacy groups and medical specialty societies. By working with an experienced external partner, PAGs and MSSs alike can accelerate the achievement of these benefits to support the needs of their stakeholders.
Read more in our whitepaper: “Accelerating Interoperability with USCDI”