Tuesday, September 22, 2015

The September 2015 HIT Standards Committee

The September 2015 HIT Standards Committee was notable for the naming of new members and for the incorporation of the NwHIN Power Team (Dixie Baker) Standards Maturity model in all of ONC’s planning.

Ten members of the committee reached their term limit in June.   New confirmed members announced today are

Jitin Asnaani, Technical Expertise – Information Exchange
Josh Mandel, Provider Representative
Rich Elmore , Technical Vendor Representative
Angela Kennedy, Consumer/Patient Representative
Patty Sengstack, Provider Representative

Three more will be announced this Fall and the final two will be named in early 2016.

Jon White and Leslie Kelly Hall presented the Precision Medicine Task Force Recommendations

As you can see in the presentation, they divided up the required standards into green, yellow, red - ready for use, promising for use, and more work to be done.    The committee offered a few recommendations i.e. move genomics standards from green to yellow, move consent standards from red to yellow, and clarify the interoperability standards advisory examples.  The committee adopted the recommendations as revised.    As mentioned above, the entire classification effort was guided by the Standards Maturity Model published in JAMIA 

Next we heard from Steve Posnack , who presented the rubric/framework for sub regulatory standards guidance i.e. what standards are appropriate for what use case and what is their level of maturity?   Specific scores (bubbles) are given to the adoption of every standard, making it very easy for developers to identify the right standard (or promising standard) to incorporate into their products.

Our October 6 meeting will be a joint meeting of the HIT Policy Committee and Standards Committee.   I imagine we’ll discuss the recently released Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020  .  Still no word on the timing of Meaningful Use Stage 2 revisions and Meaningful Use Stage 3.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

John,
Thanks for the continuous work on your blog. Always insightful a pad helpful to the learning informaticist.
CMS's failure to release the 2015-2017 Interim MU rule is a disgrace! Regardless of the decision to move forward, pause or completely renovate Stage 3 of MU, the hospital and provider communities deserve the degree of short certainty which the 2015-2017 interim rule will provide.
CMSs failure to release the rule in a timely will once again cause ongoing problems as the objectives and measures will change with little lead time. For example, EHs not already using eRX (and I imagine their maybe some) will likely be rushing to implement the related software and workflows for a Jan 1, 2016 reporting period start. Other work related to interfaces for public reporting clearing houses will need attention.
Whether one should have been prepared for these probable changes is moot, the federal leaders for the MU program have the responsibility to communicate effective and openly with the constituents of the program. It is the ability of the local IT workforce to effectively, accurately and reliably develop operational processes which will ultimately lead to the results envisioned and we work best when the rules of the road are clear and laid out well in advance!
Thanks so much for listening and continue the great work!
Sincerely,
Matthew Shafiroff, MD
VP of Medical Informatics
Stellaris Health
Diplomats, Subspecialty Board of Clinical Informatics-ABPM