Problems to be Solved:

• Sharing of data for patient care and research is hindered by a lack of standardized data definitions

• This increases the complexity for health care organizations to share data since they must customize the data “feeds” 

• Integrating data across repositories for broader analysis is also complicated as the data definitions must be reconciled across repositories and in some cases it may be impossible to do this with validity

• A number of groups have been focused on this challenge but have been working independently resulting in duplication of effort and continued variations in data definitions across so called “standardized” data definitions

The Goals of CIIC are to:

• Develop a shared understanding of common interoperability issues across clinical domains
• Obtain commitments across stakeholders to collaborate to share resources to reduce duplication of efforts and adopt common data elements
• Develop mechanisms to prioritize and carry out work.
• Adopt a governance structure driven by clinical stakeholders

Important Files

Candidate CIIC Project

CIIC is looking for partners to become early testers of our concept for improving interoperability in health care.  We are seeking clinically-driven projects that would benefit from the development, community review and use of open, generalizable information models. If you would like your project considered as one of the early CIIC projects, or if you’d simply like to share information about your project, please review the links below and complete the Project Intake Form. The content of your submission will be made public. Please contact Virginia Riehl (virginia.riehl@verizon.net) with any questions.

Project Intake Form

CIIC Commitments

This document contains a list of criteria we use to evaluate projects for fit, and also to determine how we can best support your project. In summary we are looking for projects committed to using a shared, standards-based approach, with multiple stakeholder involvement. We’re most interested in supporting projects that have real-world implementation and use goals and active timelines. CIIC does not seek to become a steward of content that is developed – we are here to help you accomplish this easier and faster.

CIIC Commitments.pdf

CIIC Past Meetings

Past meeting information including agendas, slide decks and other meeting materials are found here.    

In the News

Politico Coverage of the July 13, 2017 CIIC Meeting (Politico Morning eHealth Newsletter, July 14, 2017)

STANDARDIZING STANDARDS: About 100 health IT nerds from government, medical groups and academia gathered at NIH on Thursday to begin organizing an umbrella group to coordinate work on standardized health data definitions, a major part of technical interoperability.

The meeting was convened by HL7 and the Healthcare Services Platform Consortium to create a plan for defining common data elements that can be shared across health care, from the clinic to research. “The idea is to take existing efforts to use standard things and common tools and put the work in a library where everyone can see it and use it,” said Stan Huff, chief medical informatics officer at Intermountain Healthcare. “We’re not trying to create a huge new organization. We want to be able to say, ‘here’s a formal way to describe the data tools you’re using. You can find out if someone else has already done the work you’re starting, or if you’ve done something, you can save everyone else the work.’”

“This is arguably the most difficult thing in informatics,” said ONC chief Don Rucker, who spoke to the group. “The EHR systems were sold to Congress as, “These things are electronic, they’ll talk to each other. I mean there are wires, right? Or it’s wireless? Aren’t those things supposed to talk to each other?”