The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information and the Department of Veterans Affairs has asked for help from experts to develop the standards and pilot the technology for the planned automate Blue Button initiative.According to the release on the Department of Health and Human Services website, ONC’s Office of Consumer eHealth acting director Lygeia Ricciard and acting chief scientist of the Director Office of Standards and Interoperability Doug Fridsma wrote that the automate Blue Button initiative will allow patients to view, download and send personal health information online.
Under the program, patients can use the ‘Blue Button’ in the patient portal to “privately and securely automate the sending of that data from their health care providers to their personal health records, email accounts, health-related applications, or other preferred holding place.”
The Blue Button initiative was introduced in the Patient Access Summit June 4 and is based on the blue button in the VA’s MyHealtheVet portal.
Ricciard and Fridsma wrote that the ONC will host a webinar on August 15.
