ONC interop czar on CommonWell Health Alliance, HIMSS 2013 matters

• 
  Don Fluckinger

  Senior News Writer
• Published: 06 Mar 2013

NEW ORLEANS -- Formally, Doug Fridsma, M.D., has one long title: Director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. Informally, he's simply known as the nation's health data interoperability czar.

As such, he was the man of the hour at HIMSS 2013, where five EHR vendors announced the CommonWell Health Alliance, a private-sector interoperability initiative to connect patient data across competing health data systems.

In this podcast interview, he offers his take on CommonWell and outlines what he sees as interoperability challenges for the U.S. health care system in 2014 as it moves into meaningful use stage 2.

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