ONC Staff Profiles – Carmen Smiley

The Office of the National Coordinator is launching a new website series showcasing ONC staff members termed Inside of ONC. Inside ONC will spotlight an inclusive landscape of ONC staff members members, a selection of positions, and the numerous backgrounds of these operating in ONC. 

Name: Carmen Smiley
ONC Office: Office of Technological innovation, Specifications Division
Title: IT Professional

How does your division/business office healthy into ONC?

The Specifications Division functions as the most important source for requirements evaluation, improvement, development, and specialized aid for ONC, federal and point out associates, and other stakeholders across the health care industry.

Notify us about your get the job done at ONC.

I guide and coordinate jobs involving individual matching and pharmacy interoperability. My do the job connects me with all kinds of individuals – from my ONC colleagues to federal partners to various market stakeholders – supplying them with advice, technical support, and study. I’m also the personnel lead for Project US@, a new, marketplace-led “tech spec” that could be utilized throughout sector for representing client addresses. You may have recently noticed me presenting to the HITAC Interoperability Requirements Workgroup, the USCDI Workgroup, or the Rapid Identity & Matching Tiger Group.

What has led you to your occupation in this article at ONC?

While working at the Indian Wellbeing Services and Children’s National Clinic in DC, my colleagues and I confronted important troubles with overall health IT adoption, implementation, servicing, analysis, reporting, and interoperability. At the same time, I saw countless possibilities in what the upcoming could seem like for wellness data, individual matching and history linkage, and other locations. Whilst I found my do the job worthwhile, I actively sought out possibilities to assistance deal with these obstacle and devise remedies to progress the industry as a entire. When I applied to my current position, it was my 200^th software for a federal career. I leverage that identical perseverance in my get the job done just about every working day.

What abilities and strengths do you keep that include price to your work portfolio?

I’m educated in anthropology, investigation, and information science, so I have a exceptional capacity to see worries and prospects from a non-technological and technical viewpoint. I’m also hyper analytical, imaginative, independent, curious, and I love trouble solving. I have over 26 yrs of practical experience in health care and have lived and labored on 4 continents.

What is a get the job done-connected accomplishment you’re most proud of? & Why?

I have experienced a number of achievements above the many years at ONC that I am very pleased of, but 1 latest accomplishment is the release of the Challenge US@ Technical Specification and Companion Guide in January 2022. The best feat of Project US@ was not necessarily the progress and publication of the specification and information, but the ability to coalesce and accomplish consensus between a broad range of stakeholders on how to seize and stand for addresses throughout the field.

What would you say is the greatest aspect of functioning for ONC?

Some of the very best elements of working for ONC is the autonomy I have above my perform and the means to constantly study.

How would you characterize ONC’s accomplishment?

I think ONC’s results may possibly be in the positive impact our function has had on federal agencies and the field as they function towards criteria adoption and interoperability.

What is a job you are now operating on and how does it in good shape into ONC mission?

A single project that I am functioning on is USCDI as the Individual Demographics Information Class Lead. The USCDI is a standardized set of wellbeing details courses and things for nationwide interoperable well being exchange. A lot of my do the job on USCDI requires partaking stakeholders, adjudicating general public remarks, conducting exploration, and functioning to add new, large-value knowledge things to aid client matching and file linkage, identity integrity, and equity. Correct client matching is a foundational necessity for nationwide interoperability.

How does ONC guidance your expert enhancement?

I have had a number of possibilities more than the yrs to get on new projects in regions wholly unfamiliar to me, lending alternatives to produce associations with a selection of people and companies, see health and fitness IT from different perspectives, acquire understanding and expertise, and manual federal partners and other market stakeholders.

What are the main values of ONC that are crucial to you?

The ONC core worth that may possibly be most usually used in exercise each and every working day is teamwork. We work together on a range of troubles that are extremely complex and therefore rely on a multidisciplinary team to solve.  We access our full prospective when we perform with each other, relying on our specific strengths to realize our collective ideal.

Are there any extra advantages of performing at ONC that you’d like to mention?

The opportunity to direct significant get the job done and possible to have countrywide effects.