Federal panel issues NHIN guidelines
Healthcare IT News
By Diana Manos, Senior Editor 10/30/06
WASHINGTON – A federal advisory panel to the Department of Health and Human Services unanimously approved today a draft of minimum requirements for participation in the Nationwide Health Information Network.
According to Simon Cohn, MD, chair of the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics’ Workgroup on National Information Infrastructure, the 37-page draft should help HHS address healthcare IT policy issues.
It should also stand as “basic criteria” for networks seeking certification by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology.
Members of the workgroup were pleased with the draft, titled: “Minimum But Inclusive Functional Requirements Needed for the Initial Definition of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).”
Cohn clarified, however, that the report would serve as a baseline only; timing and implementation strategies are not addressed. “The report is silent on the phases, stages and how many things must be implemented before [NHIN participants] can interface,” Cohn said.
The approval of this draft is a sign that movement is taking place in healthcare IT and should be a wakeup call to the industry, said Rick Brady, president and CTO of BSTI, a healthcare IT consulting firm in Okemos, Mich. “This draft is something that [the federal government] is going to latch onto as a direction to follow.”
Brady, a member of the CCHIT security workgroup, said the draft could possibly be adopted by CCHIT as a standard for certifying regional health information organizations as soon as next year.
The draft recommends that HHS:
• extend HIPAA privacy rules to cover health information exchanges and other forms of personal health information
• develop policies and procedures to accurately match patients to their health records
• require functionality that enables patient or physician privacy requests that can follow the record regardless of location
The draft also addresses:
• design of services
• high-level functional requirements
• certification
• authentication
• authorization
• person identification
• location of health information
• transport standards
• data transactions
• auditing and logging
• dynamic data access
• communications
• data storage
ONC has said that a key consideration behind the development of the Nationwide Health Information Network will be “the ability to exchange patient health information accurately and in a timely manner under stringent security, privacy, and other protections.” ONC officials call the NHIN “a system of systems.” |
发表于 2006-11-22 13:48:24