HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT awarded a total of $1.5 million to MedStar Health Research Institute and Indianapolis-based Regenstrief Institute for projects focused on agentic AI in clinical care and laboratory interoperability.
The awards are part of the agency’s Leading Edge Acceleration Projects in Health IT program, which supports efforts to address challenges in interoperable health IT, according to a Oct. 6 news release.
“Laboratory data is among the most frequently exchanged and clinically consequential data in healthcare,” Steven Posnack, principal deputy national coordinator for health IT at ONC, said in the release.
Columbia, Md.-based MedStar Health Research Institute’s project aims to give patients control over AI agents coordinating complex clinical follow-ups. The institute is developing the Sovereign Execution Bridge, an open-source software framework designed to support long-running follow-up processes, patient-controlled access to data and verifiable records of AI actions.
Regenstrief Institute plans to recruit at least three small, independent laboratories to help improve their adoption and use of standardized laboratory terminology. The project will assess readiness and data quality, identify terminology and interoperability gaps, implement improvements tailored to each laboratory and measure progress in how consistently exchanged data can be interpreted.
ONC’s 2026 funding opportunity also sought proposals to expand its Lantern tool’s application programming interface monitoring capabilities through secure, community-driven feedback. The agency received applications for the clinical AI and laboratory interoperability areas.
