This document summarizes efforts to promote the adoption of Blue Button, a standard for patients to access their health information electronically. It discusses how: 1) Blue Button enables industry-wide data exchange in a simple, efficient format. The VA and OPM have initiatives to increase Blue Button adoption. 2) The VA Innovation Center is investing over $100 million through prize challenges and fellowships to drive up private sector adoption and enhance Blue Button functionality. 3) Early results include hundreds of commitments from providers and winners that enabled Blue Button for over 200,000 patients at a low cost. The goal is for Blue Button to become the standard way patients view and transmit health data.

1. December 3, 2012

2. Today providers have many patients and patients
have many providers

3. And almost all information is exchanged with paper
Photo by Jason Winshell/SF Public Press

4. Which is dangerous and drives up costs
1.5M adverse
reactions
13K diagnoses or Rx errors
X 4K medical procedures
6K drugs
=
200K deaths/year
from errors

5. Blue Button extends simple, efficient data format in
a way that enables industry-wide data exchange.
In March OPM required all federal carriers
to Blue Button-enable their PHRs

6. Enter VA Innovations
An open government initiative investing over $100 million
in improved access, increased quality, enhanced Veteran
satisfaction, and reduced costs
Prize challenge to drive up Blue Button adoption in private sector
Innovation projects to enhance Blue Button functionality
Presidential Innovation Fellows to automate Blue Button

7. Format: First across the goal line
Threshold: 25,000 providers deploy Blue Button-enabled PHR
for patients
Prize purse: $50,000
Winners: McKesson’s RelayHealth with 200,000 providers
offering Blue Button
Cost: ~0.3¢/patient

8. Selected Blue Button partners
Over 400 commitments on the ONC website

9. Industry Challenge: Enhance Blue Button Functionality
Blue Button Focus:
Expand types of data and information that Blue Button handles
Develop applications that make use of the data
Provide tools that help patients personal health information
Extend the usefulness of the Blue Button concept
Nearly half of all submissions came in under this topic area
3 winners selected

10. Presidential Innovation Fellows
“Our purpose is to give patients better access to and use of
their Personal Health Information based on Blue Button.”
Improved readability and organization
Increased data portability
Easier mobile development
Patient-Mediated Information Exchange

11. In the near future, Blue Button will be the way that we
view, download, and transmit health data
#ABBI for your
• primary care physician
• specialty care provider
• in-home caregiver
• pharmacist
PHRs that are tagged, labeled, and coded
will be more clinically useful

12. To be successful, we have to:
We need Blue Button apps that
Keep data current always have latest update of
patient records
We need Blue Button apps that
Enrich the experience make it easier for patients to
engage in their health
We need Blue Button apps that
Connect to health outcomes show how connectivity
improves patient outcomes

13. www.va.gov/VAi2
www.innovation.va.gov

14. Coming soon: The complete medical record
• VA Demographics
• VA Problem List
• VA Admissions and Discharges (including Discharge Summaries)
• VA Notes (progress notes)
• VA Laboratory Results
• VA Vitals and Readings
• VA Pathology and Radiology Reports
• VA Electrocardiogram (EKG) Reports
• Self Entered Food and Activity Journals
• VA Continuity of Care Document (VA CCD)