Within the Veterans Health Administration (VHA)Office of Informatics and Analytics (OIA), Health Informatics, the Standards and Interoperability program (S&I) supports VA's investment in health IT through its work developing and implementing health IT standards. The purpose of this work is to ensure that electronic health records are computable and interoperable with the Department of Defense (DoD), other Federal health providers, and private sector health providers. Ultimately, this results in improved service to our nation's Veterans and their families. The General Standards Team, under S&I, provides subject matter expertise, policy expertise, and strategic guidance concerning standards implementation in VHA health IT systems. General Standards covers the continuum from the development of standards with Federal and private sector standards development organizations (SDOs) through communicating clear requirements and tracking the implementation of standards within VHA.
Ambit provides subject matter expert (SME) and project management support to the VA General Standards Team. Ambit team members serve in leadership positions on a variety of standards development and standards-related organizations to represent VA's interest in the development and adoption of healthcare IT and interoperability standards. Ambit also provides expertise in standards modeling and tooling to support standards development and implementation. Our consultants work with other federal agencies, including DoD and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to provide community architecture support and standards architecture coordination and collaboration. Our team members are active in defining industry Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) standards to ensure that these standards meet VHA stakeholder needs. Ambit personnel have been active in the implementation of these standards in the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) and Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record (VLER) efforts. Ambit also provides project management support for VA's Meaningful Use project and Medical Device Interoperability Program (MDIP). Additionally, Ambit supports the General Standards team in developing strategic objectives supporting OIA's mission and measuring program performance to demonstrate value to the United States Veteran.
Ambit team members have helped to expand VA's network and representation in standards organizations, activities, working groups, and federal partners, including Health Level Seven (HL7), Federal Health Administration's (FHA) Federal Health Interoperability Model (FHIM) project, Object Management Group (OMG), National Council on Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN), and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). Our consultants have successfully designed and developed Model Driven Health Tools (MDHT) to provide an approach to standards implementation that adequately addresses issues of complexity and the lack of formal tooling and methodology for template design and implementation. Our team is supporting early adopters of MDHT internally in VLER Health and externally at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).