Health IT Experts Invited to Contribute to Standards Harmonization Effort

July 27, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

Operating under contract to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the HITSP identifies the standards necessary to enable the secure exchange of patient data across the NHIN.

Last October, the HITSP delivered its first set of interoperability specifications to HHS in the areas of electronic health records (EHRs), biosurveillance and consumer empowerment.

The 30 HITSP recommended standards were accepted in January.

The HITSP is actively engaged in standards harmonization to address the latest set of "use cases" identified by the American Health Information Community (AHIC). These include quality, medication management, consumer access to clinical information, emergency responder electronic health records (ER-EHRs), as well as security and privacy capabilities.

Specifically, the HITSP develops its recommendations through four technical committees:

• Care Delivery Technical Committee (medication management and ER-EHR use cases).
• Consumer Empowerment Technical Committee (consumer access to clinical information use case).
• Population Health Technical Committee (quality use case).
• Security and Privacy Technical Committee (relevant issues for all use cases).

Qualified industry experts are invited to volunteer in the HITSP and one or more of its technical committees. Requirements for technical committee participation include membership on the panel, as well as experience relating to health care information technology (HIT) systems, HIT standards development and implementation, HIT vendors/suppliers, health care providers/clinicians and/or subject matter expertise in any of the use case domains.

Standing conference calls with web collaboration are the primary means of participation. Dates and times for weekly calls will be provided based on the specific technical committee schedule.

Qualified experts who would like to volunteer for a HITSP technical committee may contact Jessica Kant, Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) standards harmonization coordinator, at jkant@himss.org. More information on HITSP is available at www.ansi.org/hitsp.

Source: American National Standards Institute (ANSI).