crs_reports: R49436

Congressional Research Service reports with summaries, authors, and topic classifications.

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id title publish_date update_date status content_type authors topics summary pdf_url html_url
R49436 Digital Health Information Interoperability: Background and Selected Policy Considerations 2026-09-29T04:00:00Z 2026-10-03T05:24:09Z Active Reports Nora Wells Health Care Delivery, Health & Medical R&D, Technology & Innovation Interoperability, essentially the ability of different technologies to speak with one another, is a key concept in the advancement of modernized digital health information exchange across a variety of health-related settings nationwide. Health information systems in part use health information technology (IT), a broad category of tools that may encompass electronic health records (EHRs), patient portals, medical imaging, and remote patient monitoring. Health IT may be used in a variety of ways in health-related settings, from underpinning individual patient care to population health improvement efforts such as disease tracking. Interoperable health IT can potentially allow for the rapid, seamless, and secure exchange of authorized digital health information between parties without special effort on the part of those exchanging it. Ultimately, a system of interoperable health IT may create an infrastructure that supports a learning health system. In a learning health system, a single longitudinal record of a patient’s care over the course of their lifetime can follow them from provider to provider, state to state. Such a system allows continuous learning cycles that can produce innovative knowledge that in turn improves health outcomes. Many offices and operating divisions within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) collaborate to further digital health information interoperability efforts, including primarily the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Multiple other HHS actors, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Office of Inspector General, serve roles as well. Digital health information interoperability in the United States is a long-term initiative spanning multiple decades. Modern digital health information interoperability has been advanced by a variety of laws and regulations building upon one another. In tandem with other supporting efforts, at least five laws and 18 regulations (either proposed or final) have largely shaped the present state of digital health information interoperability nationwide. As goals for interoperability become more expansive and complex, in part due to technological innovations, federal actors have continued to face barriers slowing health information exchange at the national level. Because interoperability relies on intersecting efforts, barriers to developing it may compound one another. This report focuses primarily on digital health information interoperability through the lens of ONC efforts to promote interoperability among EHRs, consistent with historical HHS interoperability efforts. https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/PDF/R49436/R49436.2.pdf https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/R/HTML/R49436.html

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