Certification standards have been clarified in the meaningful use final rule, and when possible, standards allow flow-through from meaningful use requirements, said Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD, acting director of the Office of Interoperability and Standards at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), speaking at the July 27 HIT Standards Committee meeting.

The final rule for Stage 1 meaningful use has been published in the Federal Register, marking the end of just one part of the first cycle that is the first stage of meaningful use, said Karen Trudel, deputy director of the Office of E-Health Standards & Services at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, speaking at the July 27 meeting of the Health IT Standards Committee. Were moving away from a totally completely a policy development process to one that is a mixture of policy and operations, she said.

SRS and Ingenix have formed a partnership to expand clinical, financial and administrative operations options for SRS customers.

Patty Thierry Sheridan, MBA, has been elected president of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

The panel discussion titled HIE: Is it real? Does it work? at the recent AMDIS Physician-Computer Symposium offered an opportunity for HIE vendors Axolotl, ICA, Microsoft and McKesson to explain the value of health information exchanges to a roomful of CMIOs.

Connecting clinical decision support (CDS) to evidence-based medicine can mean assembling or linking to knowledge bases, having reliable access to the latest research and practice-based evidence, and figuring out who pays and how. And those decision support systems better be workflow-sensitive. But organizations that take the CDS-evidence-based medicine plunge have a lot to gain, as do their patients.

Health information exchanges are nearing meaningful use in terms of their business strategy, said Trudi Matthews, director of policy and public relations at HealthBridge, during a recent webinar discussion on the release of the eHealth Initiative's annual HIE survey. The webinar, hosted by the Washington, D.C.-based eHealth Initiative, disseminated data from the organization's seventh annual survey on HIE.

For an organization looking to build a health information exchange (HIE), a solid request for proposal (RFP) is vital for garnering accurate vendor proposals and a realistic estimation of costs. The RFP also is instrumental in honing technology and business requirements for all stakeholders before inviting vendors in.