New data is now available for public use that helps inform the history and current state of the certified health IT market. We explore that in this blog post, which is part of our new Digital Dividends blog series.
Utilization of Certified Health IT by Clinicians and Hospitals ASTP/ONC and Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) coordinated the release of new 2023 data on the certified health IT used by hospitals and clinicians for participation in the Medicare Promoting Interoperability (PI) Program and the Promoting Interoperability performance category of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System, respectively. To meet the annual program requirements, eligible hospitals and clinicians use certified electronic health record technology. Only data from 2023 are currently available for hospitals; however, we anticipate working together on upcoming releases. Data from 2019 to 2022 and 2023 are now available to clinicians. The datasets merge Medicare PI Program and Merit-based Incentive Payment System data with the ONC Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL) to link hospital and clinician participants with the specific certified technologies reported for each performance year. Each dataset has identifiers for hospitals and clinicians, making it possible to further connect it to other health care datasets that can enhance and broaden its application.
Hospitals’ Participation in Health Information Networks
Through ASTP/ONC’s partnership with the American Hospital Association (AHA), we support the annual fielding of the Information Technology Supplement to the AHA Annual Survey of US hospitals. The supplement has long asked hospitals about their participation in health information networks, including regional, state, and local health information exchange organizations (HIEs); national networks; EHR vendor networks; and, now, active and planned participation in a Qualified Health Information Network®, as part of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™.
We’re pleased to make a new dataset available that pools hospital responses to these relevant questions from 2022-2024, representing each hospital’s most recent report of participation in these various networks. In all, over 3,000 non-federal acute care hospitals are included across these 3 years of survey data. Given that this is pooled survey data and does not represent a census of hospitals, data users should be aware of non-response bias when generalizing the data because the dataset includes hospital identifiers to facilitate data linkages. We hope that the larger IT Supplement data, which is available through the AHA and covers a wider range of topics, such as hospitals’ use of artificial intelligence, partners in the health information exchange, information blocking, and more, will pique interest. The data could also be linked to the above PI Program dataset to generate insights across both sets of data.
Data from the Past and Present on Health App Marketplaces Beginning in 2019, ASTP/ONC began studies of various public-facing app marketplaces (or galleries) hosted by both EHR companies and innovative organizations. An initial baseline understanding of how many businesses were actively pursuing integrations with EHRs and developing innovative applications to enhance the ecosystem of applications and services available to EHR users was presented in the initial findings of our study, which we published. We now provide a new dataset of the list of apps and software applications discovered via these sources for years 2019-2025 for public use. The dataset is a “snapshot” of all the apps featured at these data sources for each year and includes information taken directly from each website, such as the name of the app, the name of the developer, and a description of the app. This project has been used for a long time to study the emergence of new technology—including the first ambient scribe—and the ways in which health care innovators, start-ups, and digital health companies are delivering new technologies that can assist in resolving and enhancing the most pressing issues facing health technology and health care. We believe the time is right—and the data robust enough—to make the dataset available to the entire community for its use and exploration. This data continues to inform ASTP/ONC’s work, including additional studies on digital health company experiences with APIs.
New Information, New Opportunities We hope this data encourages innovative use, thoughtful questions, and bottom-up approaches to understand these areas of the health IT market. Be on the lookout for future data updates! This is just the beginning of more insights and data for public use coming your way in 2025 and beyond.
