Testimony to the HIT Policy Committee

 by John Halamka, Life as  Healthcare CIO


Doug Fridsma and I were asked to brief the HIT Policy Committee about the current activities of the HIT Standards Committee, ensuring coordination as we all work to finalize Meaningful Use Stage 2.

We used this presentation, which covers three major themes:

*Meaningful Use Stage 2 gap analysis work
*The Standards Summer Camp Activities
*The Standards and Interoperability Framework activities

Doug started by reiterating the guiding principles of the HIT Standards Committee  which essentially translate into

"We will select no standard before its time"

Doug reflected on the way we select standards, assigning each requirement to one of four "buckets"

a. Functional criteria only – no standards are needed
b. Sufficient standards and implementation guides are available
c. Existing standards are available but not implementation guides
d. No standards or implementation guides are available

He discussed early work to place proposed Meaningful Use Stage 2 policy goals into these 4 buckets.

Since many of the Stage 2 goals will not have supporting standards and implementation guides in time for the regulations, it's like that some of stage 2 will be described using functional criteria and not standards.   What does that mean?   Here's an example

Electronic medication administration records (EMAR) are unlikely to require a specific bar code format.  Instead, it will be sufficient to require that a certified application be capable of 5 functions

*Generate alert for wrong patient
*Generate alert for wrong medication
*Record the dose and route
*Record the provider administering the medication
*Record the time/date the medication was administered

Implementation details will be left to the creativity of the marketplace.   

I described the Standards Summer Camp schedule and offered updates on

• Metadata
• Patient Matching
• ePrescribing
• Surveillance Implementation Guide
• NwHIN

Doug completed the presentation by describing the Standards and Interoperability Framework Projects

*CDA consolidation
*Transitions of Care
*Lab Results reporting
*Provider directories
*Distributed query (Using a web browser to query multiple databases such as is done with Shrine/I2B2 )

We took questions from the committee including how best to develop drug/drug interaction standards, how the policy committee can best work with the standards committee by providing requirements early and often, and how we can all plan for the future of stage 3.

A great meeting!