Federal Health Architecture (FHA)

Current Tasks | Standards | Federal Health Architecture Products

FHA Activities

The FHA's main activities and tasks are focused on participating in national health IT issues and providing the federal perspective on health IT initiatives. Identification of FHA Tasks is based on their expected overall contribution to the achievement of the national health IT priorities - which will ultimately deliver benefits to the healthcare providers and payers and improve healthcare for consumers. FHA helps to improve how federal agencies participate in, support and facilitate the President's health IT plan.

FHA Tasks are specific assignments that directly support its goals of input, implementation and accountability in alignment with the President's health IT plan:

Goals of FHA
Input	Implementation	Accountability
Goal: Federal expertise and experience supports the President's Health IT Plan through participation, coordination, and the leveraging of federal systems investments.	Goal: The President's health IT plan is implemented in the federal agencies, in alignment with the Federal Enterprise Architecture, through adoption of standards, certified applications and the protection.	Goal: Federal agencies coordinate effective capital planning activities, and invest in and implement interoperable health IT.

Accomplishments and Contributions to Health IT Interoperability to Date

• Realigned vision, goals and strategies with the President's health IT plan to create a federal health IT environment that is interoperable with the private sector and will enable better care, increased efficiency, and improved population health.
• Defined better business processes to protect the nation's food supplies while saving money through inter-department cooperation
• Coordinated federal input into national health IT standards and nationwide health information networks (ongoing)

  Standards

  • Developed and adopted over 20 recommendations for health IT standards through the FHA Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) Task Team. These standards are being integrated with HITSP efforts, adopted by agencies, and incorporated into procurements.
  • Facilitated federal agency participation in the HITSP Technical Committees and coordinated the submission of federal comments on the HITSP Standards Gap & Overlap Analyses produced by the Biosurveillance, Consumer Empowerment, and Electronic Health Records Technical Committees.

  Health Information Exchange (Nationwide Health Information Network)

  • Organized stakeholders from 20 federal agencies into groups that represented specific end-user communities and perspectives:
    • Consumer
    • Payer/Administrator/Regulator
    • Provider
    • Researcher/Educator
    • Surveyor
  • Reviewed all NHIN functional requirements, identified gaps & overlaps, and recommended additional functional requirements in preparation for the first-ever Nationwide Health Information Network Public Forum.
  • The FHA participated in the NCVHS Executive Subcommittee Hearing on NHIN Functional Requirements and provided an overview of its findings, detailed comments and recommendations for the subcommittee's consideration.

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