The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) views strong investments in innovation as essential to its strategic mission and to support the achievement of better care, better health, and the lowering of the costs of care delivery through continuous improvement.  

Many of ONC’s programs and initiatives directly support innovation. Research conducted in the Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program, infrastructure development in the State HIE program and its challenge grants, and demonstrations of best practices through the Beacon Community Program, will enable and facilitate the development of better health care supported by new technologies, services, and care delivery models. Furthermore, new standards and software solutions such as the Direct Project and CONNECT will spur innovations in health information exchange by providing a framework for future development.  

Below please find a listing key health IT innovation initiatives directly sponsored by ONC or by other U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) agencies in collaboration with ONC.  

Select HHS Health IT Innovation Initiatives

• Prizes and Challenges - Investing in Innovations (i2) - a new program designed to spur innovations in health IT through prizes and competitions to accelerate the development of solutions and communities around key challenges in health IT.
• Startup America at HHS - an initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship in health technology throughout the nation - in collaboration with the White House’s Startup America.
• Health Data Initiative at HHS - a national initiative to help consumers and communities get more value out of the nation’s wealth of health data.
• AHRQ Innovations Exchange at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) - a variety of opportunities to share, learn about, and ultimately adopt evidence-based innovations and tools suitable for a range of health care settings and populations, including searchable innovations and quality tools.
• popHealth - an open source reference implementation software service that automates the reporting of Meaningful Use quality measures. popHealth integrates with a health care provider’s electronic health record system using continuity of care records.
• MedlinePlus Connect at the National Library of Medicine and National Institutes of Health allowing health organizations and health IT providers to link patient portals and electronic health record systems to MedlinePlus.

For further details please contact:
Wil Yu, Special Assistant, Innovations
Wil.Yu@HHS.gov