Health-ISAC Hacking Healthcare 4-5-2024

April 8, 2024 | Hacking Healthcare

This week, Hacking Healthcare™ takes a look at the 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan to examine where federal health IT initiatives may be headed in the coming years. We summarize the report’s contents and then break down some useful takeaways for healthcare entities operating in the United States.

As a reminder, this is the public version of the Hacking Healthcare blog. For additional in-depth analysis and opinion, become a member of H-ISAC and receive the TLP Amber version of this blog (available in the Member Portal.)

PDF Version:

Text Version:

Welcome back to Hacking Healthcare™.

U.S. Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2024-2030

The successor to the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology’s 2020-2025 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan is here — almost. On March 27, ONC published its draft of the 2024-2030 Federal Health IT Strategic Plan for public comment.[i] Let’s dig into what this document is, how it may impact Health-ISAC members, and what Health-ISAC members can do to engage with it.

What Is the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan?

In HHS’ own words, the “draft plan is a comprehensive and strategic effort developed by ONC in collaboration with more than 25 federal organizations,” and it is used by federal government organizations to prioritize resources, align and coordinate efforts, benchmark and assess progress, and signal priorities to industry.[ii] This most recent draft builds on the progress made under the previous iteration.

Why Should I Care?

The document’s primary value to Health-ISAC members is to signal U.S. federal government priorities to industry. The goals and objectives within the document help to emphasize where the federal government is likely to explore new rules and regulations, what health IT issues they are concerned about, and what efforts and initiatives they may look to develop over the next five years. While not overly detailed, it can help private sector organizations understand where the federal government is and isn’t looking to engage, and where policy gaps might need to be filled by industry.

What Is in It?

The document is split into an explanation of its four overarching goals:

Promote health and wellness
Enhance the delivery and experience of care
Accelerate research and innovation
Connect the health system with health data

Each of these is broken down into a series of three to five objectives, with each objective having its own page detailing some of the specific strategies and federal government intentions to achieve it. While the goals and objectives remain at a high level and lack specific implementation plans, they do provide a useful picture of priorities and likely lines of effort.

Issues touched on include:

National and international health information-sharing standards
Promotion of the Health Care Cybersecurity Performance Goals
The safe and responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare settings
Telehealth expansion
The development of a safe and secure healthcare application market
Educating patients on cybersecurity hygiene
International collaboration on health IT standards, cybersecurity, and electronic health information (EHI) sharing

Below, we’ll take a closer look at the bigger takeaways from the draft document and focus on places where Health-ISAC membership may wish to engage.

Action & Analysis
**Included with Health-ISAC Membership**