New data is now available to illuminate the past and present of the certified health IT market. This information is part of a new series exploring digital dividends.
Health IT Use by Hospitals and Doctors Now Publicly Detailed
Table of Contents
Fresh data offers insights into certified health IT adoption by medical facilities and practitioners.
- New 2023 data reveals certified health IT used by hospitals and clinicians for Medicare’s Promoting Interoperability Program.
- Hospital participation in health information networks from 2022-2024 is detailed in a new dataset.
- A dataset tracks health app marketplaces from 2019-2025, showcasing evolving digital health tools.
What specific certified health IT are hospitals and doctors using? ASTP/ONC and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have jointly released 2023 data detailing the certified health IT employed by hospitals and clinicians. This technology is crucial for their participation in the Medicare Promoting Interoperability (PI) Program and the Merit-based Incentive Payment System’s interoperability performance category. Both hospitals and clinicians rely on certified electronic health record technology to meet program requirements.
Currently, only 2023 data is available for hospitals. However, for clinicians, data from 2019 through 2022 is also accessible, alongside the latest 2023 figures. These combined datasets link Medicare PI Program and Merit-based Incentive Payment System information with the ONC Certified Health IT Product List (CHPL). This allows for the precise identification of certified technologies used by hospitals and clinicians each performance year. Crucially, each dataset includes unique identifiers for hospitals and clinicians, enabling further analysis by linking with other healthcare data sources.
Hospitals’ Engagement in Health Information Networks
Through a collaboration with the American Hospital Association (AHA), ASTP/ONC supports the annual collection of data via the Information Technology Supplement to the AHA Annual Survey of US hospitals. This supplement has historically gathered information on hospital involvement in various health information networks. These include regional, state, and local health information exchange organizations (HIEs), national networks, and EHR vendor networks. Notably, it now also captures active and planned participation in Qualified Health Information Networks® as part of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™.
A newly released dataset compiles hospital responses to these key questions for the years 2022-2024. It represents the most recent participation data for over 3,000 non-federal acute care hospitals across these three years. While the dataset includes hospital identifiers for data linkage, users should be mindful that it’s pooled survey data and not a complete census. This means careful consideration of potential non-response bias is important when drawing broader conclusions.
This data can be combined with the PI Program dataset to uncover deeper insights across both areas of health IT.
This new resource is intended to spark interest in the more extensive IT Supplement data available through the AHA. That larger dataset covers a wider array of topics, including hospitals’ use of artificial intelligence, their health information exchange partners, and practices related to information blocking.
Tracking Health App Marketplaces Over Time
Starting in 2019, ASTP/ONC began studying public-facing app marketplaces, often called galleries, hosted by EHR companies and other innovative entities. Initial research provided a baseline understanding of how many companies were actively developing integrations with EHRs and creating new applications to enhance the digital health ecosystem available to users.
A new dataset now offers a list of apps and software applications identified through these sources from 2019 to 2025. This dataset provides a snapshot of apps featured in these marketplaces each year. It includes details such as application name, developer, and description, directly extracted from the respective websites. This project has been instrumental in tracking the rise of new technologies, including early advancements in ambient scribes, and understanding how innovators, startups, and digital health companies are addressing major challenges in health tech and healthcare. The data is now considered robust enough to be made available for broader community use and exploration.
This ongoing work continues to inform ASTP/ONC’s research, including further studies on digital health companies’ experiences with APIs.
New Data Fuels Future Innovation
The release of this data is expected to foster creative applications, encourage thoughtful inquiry, and support bottom-up approaches to understanding the health IT market. Future data updates are planned, with more insights and information for public use anticipated in 2025 and beyond.
For additional data downloads, quick statistics, and brief analyses, visit healthit.gov/data.
