The Standards committee met on Wednesday, October 14th. Updates from the Clinical Quality, Clinical Operations, and Privacy & Security work groups were heard. The Clinical Operation group reported on identified gaps in HIE, domains, vocabulary, labs order messaging, and others. Their next steps will be to resolve the gaps and create a sub-group to focus on vocabulary gaps. The Clinical Quality work group presented an updated measure grid for meaningful use, retooling arrangements in progress, and the updated measure process workflow. The Privacy & Security work group participated in the HIT Policy Committee’s Privacy Hearing last month and has begun planning their Security Hearing scheduled for 11/19/09.
But the real show stopper and news maker came with the announcement of the newly formed Implementation work group and its chair, Aneesh Chopra. Chopra is the first ever US Chief Technology Officer and presented the charges and vision for the work group. He discussed his plan to bring experts from all industries together to share ideas and lessons learned on implementing data sharing standards across different organizations. There will be a 2-week online forum to solicit data sharing feedback and on October 29th the Standards Committee will hold a hearing on best practices in data standards.
For a detailed review of the meeting, I suggest John Halamka’s post and the Government Health IT article.