CCHIT To Test And Certify Systems For HIE
October 19, 2012
The Chicago-based Certification Commission for Health Information Technology will test and certify the computer systems used by health information exchange organizations and the users of those products as part of a plan for a public-private version of the proposed Nationwide Health Information Network.
“I think a good way to think about it is there is product testing and then there is participant testing,” Dennis Wilson, CCHIT’s technology and testing director, said. CCHIT will do both, testing against criteria developed by a partnership of two health information exchange coalitions: the multistate and vendor-participating EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup, led by the New York eHealth Collaborative, a not-for-profit that operates the Statewide Health Information Network of New York, and Healtheway, a Richmond, Va.-based not-for-profit organization that supports the eHealth Exchange.
The coalition is emerging as HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced it was putting on hold its plans to regulate the proposed national health information exchange infrastructure.
On CCHIT’s end, “We’re headed toward late this year to get some pilots done of product and participants,” Wilson said. “The goal is to get the whole thing operational at the beginning of the new year.”
For now, Healtheway and the proposed eHealth Exchange appear to remain true to a vision of a “network of networks”—a term popularized by Dr. David Brailer, the first head of the ONC, in 2004—for an interstate health information exchange system. Healtheway’s mission statement says the organization is to provide “shared governance and necessary shared service to public and private organizations who wish to interconnect as a network of networks.”
Article written by Joseph Conn with ModernHealthcare .com
