Leading Edge Acceleration Projects (LEAP) in Health Information Technology

While working to implement Cures Act provisions, ONC identified gaps with respect to leveraging EHR data to support population-level analyses and delivery of services, as well as integrating clinical knowledge into routine clinical practice. The reasons for these gaps range from a lack of data standards and interoperability to the digitization, integration, and presentation of new evidence into clinical workflows in safe, useful, and useable ways.

Therefore, this funding opportunity will support innovative and breakthrough solutions critical to maximize the potential of health IT and achieve the goal of a transformed health care delivery system through various methods, such as:

Determining the fundamental questions, the answers to which will identify barriers to nationwide interoperability and electronic exchange of health data.

Engaging the health IT industry, along with academic researchers, to identify and develop innovative solutions that address barriers to interoperability.

Disseminating findings from research while fostering collaboration, advancement, and implementation of solutions and lessons learned with the health IT industry.

Structure and Approach

ONC expects to award three cooperative agreements for a project period of two years for each recipient to focus on areas where breakthrough improvements are needed to address problems that have impeded the innovative use of health IT and thereby accelerate progress in the areas identified.

Areas of Interest

The three Areas of Interest identified below describe priorities ONC is interested in continuing to explore and advance. The descriptions include ways in which applicants may approach developing a project. The Areas of Interest have been assigned numbers for ease of reference, not for prioritization. While there are many challenges associated with the use of health IT, these three Areas of Interest have been identified as critical priority areas for ONC.

Area 1: Accelerate the use of agentic artificial intelligence solutions in clinical care and/or clinical trials

Goal

ONC seeks proposals in this area of interest to accelerate the use of standards-based agentic artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to advance clinical care and enable innovation through AI. The area of interest builds on the recently released request for information Accelerating the Adoption and Use of Artificial Intelligence as Part of Clinical Care.

Area 3: Assess laboratory interoperability gaps to improve the adoption and use of standard terminology among small, independent laboratories

Goal

The goals of this area of interest are to assess laboratory data quality and implement existing solutions aimed at improving the adoption and use of standard codes such as Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC), SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT), and Unified Codes for Units of Measure (UCUM) among small, independent laboratories. Projects should assess laboratory data quality and use that information to identify and pilot test different solutions (such as mapping tools) to facilitate the use of correct codes in laboratory data and to transition small, independent laboratories from using local laboratory codes to using standardized terminologies. Projects should focus on solutions that support conformance with national laboratory standards and can be widely implemented by small, independent laboratories.