ONC Staff Profiles – Carmen Smiley

The Workplace of the Nationwide Coordinator is launching a new weblog series featuring ONC staff members named Inside ONC. Within ONC will highlight an inclusive landscape of ONC employees customers, a variety of positions, and the numerous backgrounds of individuals doing the job inside ONC. 

Title: Carmen Smiley
ONC Workplace: Place of work of Know-how, Specifications Division
Title: IT Specialist

How does your division/business in good shape into ONC?

The Specifications Division acts as the primary useful resource for benchmarks examination, growth, development, and technological guidance for ONC, federal and state companions, and other stakeholders across the well being treatment market.

Explain to us about your get the job done at ONC.

I direct and coordinate jobs involving affected individual matching and pharmacy interoperability. My perform connects me with all kinds of people today – from my ONC colleagues to federal associates to various field stakeholders – delivering them with advice, complex help, and investigate. I’m also the staff direct for Challenge US@, a new, market-led “tech spec” that could be employed throughout marketplace for symbolizing individual addresses. You may well have a short while ago noticed me presenting to the HITAC Interoperability Expectations Workgroup, the USCDI Workgroup, or the Rapid Id & Matching Tiger Crew.

What has led you to your occupation below at ONC?

Even though doing work at the Indian Health and fitness Service and Children’s Countrywide Healthcare facility in DC, my colleagues and I faced substantial worries with health IT adoption, implementation, routine maintenance, analysis, reporting, and interoperability. At the identical time, I saw infinite possibilities in what the foreseeable future could look like for health data, affected person matching and history linkage, and other spots. Although I discovered my perform worthwhile, I actively sought out chances to aid deal with these obstacle and devise methods to advance the field as a total. When I utilized to my recent place, it was my 200^th software for a federal occupation. I leverage that similar perseverance in my perform each and every working day.

What techniques and strengths do you hold that increase value to your function portfolio?

I’m experienced in anthropology, research, and details science, so I have a distinctive capacity to see troubles and opportunities from a non-specialized and complex viewpoint. I’m also hyper analytical, imaginative, unbiased, curious, and I like dilemma fixing. I have in excess of 26 yrs of knowledge in health care and have lived and labored on four continents.

What is a get the job done-relevant accomplishment you are most happy of? & Why?

I’ve had a number of achievements above the yrs at ONC that I am happy of, but a person the latest accomplishment is the release of the Job US@ Complex Specification and Companion Guidebook in January 2022. The greatest feat of Task US@ was not necessarily the progress and publication of the specification and guidebook, but the means to coalesce and achieve consensus among a vast range of stakeholders on how to seize and depict addresses throughout the business.

What would you say is the very best element of operating for ONC?

Some of the greatest areas of functioning for ONC is the autonomy I have above my operate and the capability to continuously study.

How would you characterize ONC’s results?

I feel ONC’s good results may possibly be in the positive influence our perform has had on federal businesses and the marketplace as they do the job towards criteria adoption and interoperability.

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

A single task that I am performing on is USCDI as the Affected individual Demographics Information Course Guide. The USCDI is a standardized established of overall health details courses and features for nationwide interoperable wellness trade. A lot of my work on USCDI will involve engaging stakeholders, adjudicating public feedback, conducting exploration, and working to insert new, higher-value information things to aid client matching and report linkage, id integrity, and fairness. Accurate client matching is a foundational need for nationwide interoperability.

How does ONC support your experienced enhancement?

I have experienced quite a few possibilities in excess of the yrs to choose on new projects in locations entirely unfamiliar to me, lending prospects to build associations with a selection of individuals and companies, see wellbeing IT from various views, obtain know-how and abilities, and guidebook federal associates and other business stakeholders.

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

The ONC main price that might be most generally utilized in apply just about every day is teamwork. We operate alongside one another on a selection of difficulties that are incredibly intricate and hence count on a multidisciplinary workforce to resolve.  We attain our whole potential when we function alongside one another, relying on our personal strengths to reach our collective very best.

Are there any supplemental benefits of working at ONC that you’d like to mention?

The chance to lead significant work and potential to have nationwide influence.