In collaboration with Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) unveiled a roadmap for the development of standards to support information governance (IG) in healthcare including national and international efforts to ensure interoperability among health information systems.

AHIMA is calling for comments on the white paper, Health IT Standards for Health Information Management Practices, which outlines an approach for cross-collaboration between health information management (HIM) professionals, standards developers and health IT vendors to support the capture, management, sharing and use of electronic health information.

AHIMA developed the white paper with IHE to promote the use of standards to achieve functional interoperability and effective use of health information systems, including EHR systems. Part of AHIMA’s globally focused information governance initiative, the white paper marks a first-time effort for HIT vendors and HIM professionals to work together to ensure that interoperability will be addressed from an HIM perspective.

The paper offers a detailed analysis of HIM business requirements and best practices related to information availability, integrity and protection; presents use cases that specify the HIT capabilities needed to support HIM practices; and defines a roadmap for expanding the list of Use Cases to support HIM business requirements in the development of standards.