The federal government has awarded $1.5 million to two healthcare research organizations pursuing projects aimed at improving the use and exchange of health information.
The ONC said Regenstrief Institute and MedStar Health Research Institute will receive funding through its LEAP in Health IT initiative.
The projects target separate challenges within digital healthcare. One will examine ways to allow patients more authority over artificial intelligence systems involved in coordinating follow-up care. The other will work with smaller laboratories to address inconsistencies that can prevent health data from being understood correctly when transferred between systems.
MedStar’s initiative is designed to expand the concept of patient access to medical records. Researchers want to develop tools that allow individuals to control how AI systems perform certain care-related tasks.
At the center of the effort is the Sovereign Execution Bridge, software intended to manage complicated clinical follow-up activities. The system is expected to support processes that unfold over longer periods while using patient-controlled information storage based on the Solid protocol.
The researchers also plan to incorporate cryptographic checks and certificates designed to reveal unauthorized changes. The objective is to make AI-driven care coordination easier to verify while ensuring that patient authorization remains central to the process.
Regenstrief’s initiative addresses a different interoperability problem involving laboratory information. The institute plans to work with at least three independent labs to examine the quality and consistency of the data they exchange.
The project will assess each lab’s technical readiness, locate terminology mismatches, and determine why those problems occur. Researchers will then introduce solutions suited to individual facilities, test whether the changes improve data exchange, and develop strategies for maintaining those improvements.
A key measure will be semantic interoperability, or whether information sent from one healthcare system can be accurately interpreted by another.
LEAP in Health IT has supported research into longstanding interoperability and technology issues for nearly a decade. For its 2026 cycle, ONC also invited proposals focused on expanding its monitoring system by adding secure feedback from the health IT community alongside automated testing. Applications were received for the laboratory-focused and agentic AI areas, with submissions closing July 16, 2026.
The latest grants reflect ONC’s broader effort to improve the use of electronic health information for healthcare delivery and large-scale analysis while connecting clinical expertise with routine care. The funded projects remain in the initial stage, meaning the announcement does not report completed patient outcomes.
As more federal agencies make funding available to support the integration of AI into the different programs they oversee, the technology is likely to be adopted much quicker than if it was left to only private-sector players like Globaltech Corporation (OTCQB: GLTK) to be at the forefront of digitization.
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