The December HIT Standards Committee Meeting

 by John Halamka, Life as a Healthcare CIO


We began the meeting by relating our standards trajectory to today's agenda.

Our outstanding standards issues for discussion include

1. Content
Continued discussion of GreenCDA on the wire and overview of Stan Huff's CIMI initiative

Standardizing DICOM image objects for image sharing and investigating other possible approaches (e.g., cloud based JPEG2000 exchange).   Consider image transfer standards, image viewing standards, and image reporting standards.

Query Health i.e. I2B2 distributed queries that send questions to data instead of requiring consolidation of data

Simplify the specification for quality measures to enhance consistency of implementation.

The December meeting included an overview of Query Health and Quality measure standards, leaving the discussion of GreenCDA/CIMI and DICOM to our 2012 meetings.

2. Vocabulary
Extend the quality measurement vocabularies to clinical summaries
Lab ordering compendium

The December meeting included a discussion of the lab ordering compendium, leaving the discussion of clinical summary vocabularies to our 2012 meetings.

3. Transport
Specify how the metadata ANPRM be integrated into the health exchange architecture

Additional NwHIN standards development (hearing re Exchange specification complexity, review/oversight of the S&I framework work on Exchange specifications simplification).   Further define secure RESTful transport standards.

Accelerate provider directory pilots (Microdata, RESTful query/response that separates the transaction layer from the schema) and rapidly disseminate lessons learned.

The December meeting included an update on the provider directory and certificate components of transport

Our first presentation was an NCVHS update on ACA Section 10109 by Walter Suarez.

The Committee emphasized the need to coordinate NCHVS work and HITSC work given that division between administrative and clinical data is becoming less distinct over time

Our second presentation was an Implementation Workgroup Update by Liz Johnson about testing procedures that support the certification process.

The committee emphasized the need to pilot these procedures, ensuring they are as simple as possible and reflect a practical evaluation of the functionality intended to support policy goals.

Next, Doug Fridsma and Rich Elmore gave an ONC update.   Rich Elmore described the Query Health initiative, as referenced in my previous blog post about sending questions to data (rather than sending data to registries). 

The committee endorsed the work and noted that further research will be needed to link patients across multiple databases to avoid double counting individuals in quality measure denominators.  The work of Jeff Jonas, as described in my earlier blog post about linking identity.

Doug updated the committee about the S&I Framework initiatives - Transitions of Care, Lab Results, Provider Directories, Data Segmentation (for privacy protection), and electronic submission of medical documentation for Medicare review.

We then discussed a preliminary framework for HITSC 2012 Workplan to ensure the items in the standards trajectory listed above are completed in 2012 as we continue to prepare for meaningful use stage 3.

A great meeting.