ONC Staff Profiles – Carmen Smiley

The Office of the Countrywide Coordinator is launching a new blog collection that includes ONC team named Inside of ONC. Inside ONC will highlight an inclusive landscape of ONC employees members, a wide variety of positions, and the varied backgrounds of all those working within ONC. 

Identify: Carmen Smiley
ONC Business office: Office of Technological know-how, Requirements Division
Title: IT Professional

How does your division/place of work suit into ONC?

The Requirements Division acts as the main resource for requirements assessment, progress, improvement, and technological help for ONC, federal and state partners, and other stakeholders throughout the wellness care market.

Inform us about your function at ONC.

I lead and coordinate jobs involving affected individual matching and pharmacy interoperability. My get the job done connects me with all sorts of people today – from my ONC colleagues to federal associates to a variety of sector stakeholders – furnishing them with direction, specialized guidance, and investigate. I’m also the team direct for Challenge US@, a new, industry-led “tech spec” that could be made use of throughout field for representing client addresses. You may possibly have not long ago noticed me presenting to the HITAC Interoperability Benchmarks Workgroup, the USCDI Workgroup, or the Quick Id & Matching Tiger Group.

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

Even though doing work at the Indian Wellness Services and Children’s Nationwide Healthcare facility in DC, my colleagues and I confronted considerable issues with wellbeing IT adoption, implementation, routine maintenance, examination, reporting, and interoperability. At the exact time, I noticed countless alternatives in what the upcoming could glimpse like for wellbeing info, client matching and history linkage, and other parts. Although I identified my function rewarding, I actively sought out chances to help handle these challenge and devise remedies to progress the industry as a complete. When I utilized to my present position, it was my 200^th software for a federal job. I leverage that very same perseverance in my get the job done every single day.

What techniques and strengths do you keep that increase benefit to your operate portfolio?

I’m educated in anthropology, analysis, and data science, so I have a distinctive potential to see troubles and possibilities from a non-technological and specialized viewpoint. I’m also hyper analytical, imaginative, unbiased, curious, and I adore issue resolving. I have about 26 many years of expertise in healthcare and have lived and worked on four continents.

What is a function-related accomplishment you’re most happy of? & Why?

I have had several accomplishments around the many years at ONC that I am happy of, but just one latest accomplishment is the launch of the Venture US@ Complex Specification and Companion Manual in January 2022. The finest feat of Project US@ was not necessarily the enhancement and publication of the specification and guidebook, but the capability to coalesce and reach consensus between a vast selection of stakeholders on how to seize and symbolize addresses across the marketplace.

What would you say is the best element of doing work for ONC?

Some of the ideal areas of doing work for ONC is the autonomy I have more than my get the job done and the potential to constantly discover.

How would you characterize ONC’s results?

I consider ONC’s achievement may well be in the optimistic influence our work has had on federal companies and the sector as they do the job towards criteria adoption and interoperability.

What is a job you are currently working on and how does it match into ONC mission?

Just one venture that I am functioning on is USCDI as the Patient Demographics Details Course Guide. The USCDI is a standardized established of wellness facts classes and elements for nationwide interoperable health trade. Much of my operate on USCDI involves engaging stakeholders, adjudicating community reviews, conducting exploration, and performing to increase new, significant-price info features to guidance client matching and file linkage, identification integrity, and equity. Precise client matching is a foundational requirement for nationwide interoperability.

How does ONC guidance your skilled improvement?

I have had several possibilities in excess of the a long time to acquire on new projects in parts absolutely unfamiliar to me, lending options to acquire associations with a wide range of folks and companies, see wellness IT from distinctive views, attain expertise and abilities, and information federal companions and other market stakeholders.

What are the core values of ONC that are vital to you?

The ONC core worth that may perhaps be most often applied in observe each working day is teamwork. We operate jointly on a range of complications that are incredibly complex and thus depend on a multidisciplinary crew to address.  We arrive at our complete possible when we perform alongside one another, relying on our unique strengths to accomplish our collective most effective.

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

The prospect to guide significant perform and prospective to have national affect.