Committee seeks comments on HIE Specifications

The Health IT Standards Committee is charged with making recommendations to the National Coordinator for Health IT on standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use of health information. The ONC has defined the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) as “the set of standards, services and policies that enable secure health information exchange over the Internet”.  This summer the Power Team workgroups (Patient Matching, ePrescribing of Discharge Meds, Surveillance Implementation Guide, and NwHIN) were created and met to ensure all standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria recommendations have been identified for the ONC to move forward. On September 28, 2011, the Standards Committee agreed to the workgroups recommendations on standards and HIE specifications for the NwHIN and presented them to the ONC.

The recommendations call for further investigation of HIE specifications along with ONC performing more assessment of industry adoption and deployment. And specifically to solicit input from exchange implementers on their implementation experiences. From this the Committee is seeking comments on the subject through December 15th. For more information on and how to comment, see the Federal Advisory Committee blog.

The next Standards Committee meeting will be held tomorrow, the 16th from 9-3 EDT. You can find the meeting’s agenda here. As always you can participate virtually, find out how here.

Read all recommendations from HIT Standards Committee.