HIMSS: CCHIT unveils HIE interoperability testing

New Orleans—The Certification Commission for Health IT (CCHIT) is opening the pilot phase of a new health information exchange (HIE) compliance testing program at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) annual conference. The commission also is revealing program seals designed to help healthcare providers identify HIE certified technology.

At completion, the HIE compliance testing and certification program components will include the following:

  1. HIE Certified Community, for EHRs and other health IT systems, that will enable statewide patient data inquiry allowing clinicians to query an HIE for information on specific patients;
  2. HIE Certified Direct that provides a simple way for providers to send secure health information directly to trusted recipients, including patients, over the Internet; and
  3. HIE Certified Network for HIE-to-HIE connectivity and for connection to the eHealth Exchange.

Certification will be specific to each technology and its version, and include testing of commercially available products, healthcare provider participants and health information exchanges.

“For the first time providers and purchasers of EHRs and HIE will have a simple way of assuring their system has all the capabilities required for plug and play interoperability,” said Dave Whitlinger, executive director of the New York eHealth Collaborative. “In New York, vendors will be required to pass the compliance testing program in order to connect to the SHIN-NY (the Statewide Health Information of New York).”

The planned pilot testing for HIE Certified Network is the first offering of a collaboration of states, public agencies, federally funded HIEs and HIT companies covering more than 50 percent of the U.S. population. Healtheway, the public-private partnership of the eHealth Exchange, and the EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup, a consortium of states and vendors, established the program to test and certify EHRs and other health IT to enable reliable transfer of data within and across organizational and state boundaries. CCHIT was selected as the compliance testing body by the partnership.

The pilot will begin soon after the HIMSS meeting, according to CCHIT, and the launch of the certification program is planned for late in the spring. 

 

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