ONC seeks public comment on metadata standards

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPRM) recently, soliciting public comment on the metadata standards recommendation by the HIT Standards Committee and HIT Policy Committee.

Metadata is “data about data” or “data that provides more information or detail about a piece of data.” The metadata standards under consideration include:

• Patient Identity Metadata—These metadata relate to data elements about a patient and includes a patient’s name, date of birth, address, zip code and relevant patient identifiers.
• Provenance Metadata—These metadata would provide data elements about the source of the data and include information on the “who, what, where and when.” Provenance metadata would include: a tagged data element (TDE) identifier; a time stamp; the actor and the actor’s affiliation.
• Privacy Metadata—Privacy metadata would include data elements about the type and sensitivity of clinical data included, a privacy policy pointer and content elements descriptions such as data type (e.g., consultation note).

Public comment also is being sought for additional metadata categories, metadata elements or metadata syntax that should be considered. The scope of the ANPRM is the association of metadata with summary care records, including where patients obtain a summary care record from a provider’s EHR or request that it be transmitted to their personal health record (PHR). Public comment is also being sought on the use of metadata related to other electronic health information context.

In April, the HIT Policy Committee provided ONC with a report suggesting incremental steps to achieve the vision described in the PCAST Report. The HIT Policy Committee suggested ONC focus on facilitating the development and adoption of a minimal set of standards for metadata that could be “wrapped around” or attached to a summary care record when patients seek to download their health information from, for example, a provider’s patient portal or when patients direct the provider to transmit health information to a PHR.

The HIT Policy Committee suggested it would be practical to include this as part of the EHR certification requirements to support meaningful use Stage 2 under the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs. In the context of this first “use case,” the HIT Policy Committee noted minimum metadata requirements (and accompanying standards) focusing on three categories: patient identity, provenance, and privacy.

ONC is seeking public comments for 45 days following publication in the Federal Register. Public comments are due by Sept. 23.

For more information, visit ONC's website at http://healthit.hhs.gov.