This funding announcement for the Health Information Exchange Challenge Program encourages breakthrough progress for nationwide health information exchange in five challenge areas identified as key needs since Federal and State governments began implementation of the HITECH Act.

The awards will

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fund the development of technology and approaches that will be developed in pilot sites and then shared, reused, and leveraged by other states and communities to increase nationwide interoperability.

The five themes include:
1. Achieving health goals through health information exchange 2. Improving long-term and post-acute care transitions 3. Giving patients access to their own health information 4. Developing tools and approaches to search for and share granular patient data (such as specific lab results for a given time period) 5. Fostering strategies for population-level analysis Awards will range between $1 million and $2 million each, and will be in the form of supplemental funding to State Health Information Exchange Cooperative Agreements, which have provided approximately half a billion dollars to states and State designated entities to enable health information exchange.

Funding for this initiative is approximately $16 million which ONC anticipates will support 10 awards.