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NCPDP Foundation Awards $115,000 Grant to Point-of-Care Partners to Help Migrate NCPDP Telecommunication Standard to JSON Format

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SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (PRWEB)

The NCPDP Foundation Board of Trustees announced it awarded a $115,000 grant to Point-of-Care Partners to support the migration of NCPDP’s Telecommunication Standard to a JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) format, enhancing its extensibility and modernizing the real-time pharmacy claims standard. NCPDP’s Telecommunication Standard was first developed in 1988, ushering in a new and unprecedented era of real-time transactions in the pharmacy segment of healthcare. The Telecommunication Standard provides the standardized format to submit prescription drug claims, and includes transactions for eligibility verification, claim and service billing, predetermination of benefits, prior authorization, and information reporting. JSON is an open standard file format, and data interchange format, that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and array data types.

“Accelerating the modernization of this industry Standard is an important part of NCPDP’s strategic roadmap,” explained NCPDP President & CEO Lee Ann Stember. “Future-proofing the Telecommunication Standard, which is a foundational component of the healthcare infrastructure, supports our broader standards development goal to meet evolving industry needs and advance patient care. It will ensure that we are able to continue to support the many changes in healthcare from new care delivery models and advanced technologies to innovative and precision drug therapies that will shape the future of healthcare.”

Under the grant, Point-of-Care Partners will work in close collaboration with NCPDP on a phased approach to support full migration of the Telecommunication Standard to the new format, with a target completion date in December 2021. The iterative process will incorporate feedback to ensure the process achieves goals related to extensibility, interoperability, and code set management. Point-of-Care Partners will document the process for transforming existing Telecom structures and features to the new format, complete the data model and assist in creating a plan to apply the format to the standard and move it to production.

“The Foundation is excited to fund this grant to support NCPDP’s ability to convert the Telecommunication Standard to the JSON format,” explained NCPDP Foundation Chair Mindy D. Smith, BSPharm, R.Ph., MHA. “NCPDP’s Telecommunication Standard was a milestone innovation for the industry, bringing convenience and patient-centered services that we take for granted today. It is exciting to know that the Standard will continue to serve patients and providers with a new format that will make it easier for new technologies to tap into real-time data exchange enabled by the standard.”

“We are thrilled to be able to bring our decades of experience contributing to standards development and implementation to work with the NCPDP Foundation on this critical project,” said Tony Schueth, CEO and Founder of Point-of-Care Partners. “Much of the work we do across the industry is focused on leveraging health IT to better serve patients and providers and improve outcomes. Helping modernize the Telecommunication Standard in collaboration with the NCPDP Foundation fits into our mission nicely.”

About NCPDP Foundation

The NCPDP Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona and is affiliated with the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP). The NCPDP Foundation was established in December 2012 to support research, education, and charitable involvement within the healthcare industry. For more information, visit http://ncpdpfoundation.org.

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