A quarterly publication of the California Medical Association    •     Issue 3     •    Spring '06

Grants Awarded for the Development of Health Information Technology

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) was awarded a contract by the U.S. Health and Human Services Agency (HHS) to convene a group to harmonize data standards that would enable interoperability among health care software applications.

The Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) recently completed the pilot test of vendor products as part of another contract awarded by HHS. CCHIT has finalized standards for EHR functionality and expects to begin full certification this summer. As ANSI completes its work on data standardization, CCHIT expects to test for interoperability by 2008.

The National Governors Association and a consortium of privacy experts were awarded a contract by HHS to perform a state-by-state analysis of laws and regulations related to patient privacy and data security. The analysis will address inefficiencies, gaps and barriers created under HIPAA and will include recommended solutions.

HHS awarded $18.6 million in four contracts to develop prototypes of a National Health Information Network (NHIN) architecture. The four contracts went to groups of health care and health IT developers who are charged with developing an architecture and a prototype network for secure information sharing among hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and physicians in three markets. They must also work together to ensure that information can move between them—establishing a single infrastructure for sharing electronic health information.

Each group will design and test prototypes that include patient identification and information locator services; user authentication, access control and other security protections, and specialized network functions, as well as test the feasibility of large-scale deployment. They will share ideas and information about the architecture and prototypes with each other and with the public in order to accelerate a secure and seamless exchange of health information across the nation. Once created, the architecture for each of the networks will be placed in the public domain to stimulate others to develop further innovative approaches to implementing health information technology.

The NHIN consortia will work closely with other HHS partners, including the Health Information Technology Standards Panel established by the American National Standards Institute, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, and the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration established by RTI and the National Governor's Association.

California has two communities involved in this effort: Mendocino Health Resource Exchange and the Santa Cruz RHIO. Other such communities are in Massachusetts, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and North Carolina.