EHR vendor Epic says that with an expanded set of application programming interfaces (APIs), it now fully supports version 3 of the United States Core Data for Interoperability standard, which includes new data classes involving health status and health insurance information.
Epic notes that its USCDI v3 rollout occurs over a year before a December 2025 federal requirement to support the new data set.
The USCDI was established to create a foundation for the access, exchange and use of electronic health information to support patient care. The USCDI also is used by federal agencies, hospitals, physician offices, and software developers and is updated annually to keep pace with medical, technology, and policy changes.
The USCDI expanded from 52 data elements in 16 data classes in v1 to 94 data elements in 19 data classes in v3.
Epic claims that its fast-paced rollout of USCDI v3 allows healthcare apps to receive important data elements for providing personalized care. These elements include tribal affiliation, disability status, caregiver relationships, and preferred language. Interventions related to social drivers of health— such as a referral to a homeless shelter — can now be exchanged as well.
"Reliable access to social drivers of health will make a real difference in people's lives,” said Mike Pontillo, implementation executive at Epic, in a statement. “As an example use case, a health coach app could proactively connect a patient to a food bank or transportation assistance program based on data that the app can now receive.”
Epic also supports the USCDI+Cancer program, which includes data elements to further cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, research, and care.
USCDI is expanding over time as standards mature and requirements evolve. The public participates in the expansion by submitting data classes and data elements for future versions of the USCDI through the ONC New Data Element and Class (ONDEC) submission system.
Future expansions of the APIs available on open.epic will support USCDI v4 and v5. Draft v4 includes data elements that focus on patient care and facilitating patient access while promoting equity, reducing disparities, supporting underserved communities, and integrating behavioral health.
