by Tom Wilemon

Travis Osterman, DO, MS, director of Cancer Clinical Informatics at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, has been appointed chair of the executive committee for the Minimal Common Data Elements (mCODE) initiative.

Eric Winer, MD, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), appointed Osterman to the post after he served as chair of mCODE’s Technical Review Group. The mCODE initiative serves as an internationally recognized standard for describing patients with cancer across the cancer care continuum. It is an interoperable data layer that can be applied to electronic health records (EHR) using the fast health care interoperability resources (FHIR) standard to provide EHR gained consensus among national data standards groups.

“mCODE is an incredibly important project to the oncology community. We have over 55 implements across multiple countries and adoption continues to grow. I am humbled and honored to take this critical leadership position,” said Osterman.

The mCODE executive committee has representation from the National Cancer Institute, the American Society for Radiation Oncology, the Society of Surgical Oncology, ASCO and the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology. The mCODE executive committee chair oversees the strategic direction of the data standard.

Although making electronic health records compatible between hospitals and research entities has been a longtime goal, progress has been hampered because these institutions utilize different data infrastructures, such as Epic, Cerner and Allscripts. The mCODE data standard will be a universal language system in the cancer space compatible with these different electronic health record infrastructures offered by vendors.

Osterman will be stepping down as chair of the Technical Review Group. During his tenure, he was instrumental in expanding this group, working through a second round of HL7 balloting, and applying the FHIR Maturity Model to the project.