NIH recently released a notice encouraging NIH-supported clinical programs and researchers to adopt and use the standardized set of healthcare data classes, data elements, and associated vocabulary standards in the U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) standard.

The USCDI is a standardized set of health data classes and constituent data elements designed to facilitate a broader exchange of health information. The standard will benefit NIH researchers by making standardized clinical data available for research, enabling them to compare different data sets for more in-depth analysis and scientific discovery. Adoption of USCDI will also ensure that care delivery and research organizations use the same coding systems for key data elements.

These efforts build on the HL7^® Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources^® (FHIR^®) standard, which gives researchers greater access to clinical data in electronic health records. The new standards also advance the goals of the NIH Strategic Plan for Data Science and NLM’s new strategic plan to both generate and leverage vast amounts of data and ensure those data align with the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Data Principles.

Read the complete notice and learn more in the blog post, “Leveraging Standardized Clinical Data to Advance Discovery.”