new healthcare data standards for

New Healthcare Data Standards for the Country

Over the past 2 years, I've had the priviledge of working with 350

organizations as part of the US national effort to standardize

healthcare data, supporting the secure exchange of healthcare records

among patients, providers and payers with patient consent. On

Thursday, December 13, the Healthcare Information Technology Standards

Panel (HITSP), completed its 2007 work and approved 4 new

"interoperability specifications"

Quality - all the initial standards needed to support the process and

outcome measures for the Institute of Medicine's highest priority

diseases.

Consumer Empowerment - all the initial standards needed to support

personal health records exchanged via networks or via removable media

(such as thumb drives). These standards make products like Microsoft

Health Vault, the upcoming Google Health, Dossia, Medem, and Relay

Health much more useful for patients, as they make the patient the

stewards of their own data.

Lab - all the initial standards to order and result laboratories

including a consistent description of lab types, reasons for ordering

and units of measure. Today, the thousands of labs throughout the US

use a heterogeneous collection of standards which require custom

programming/configuration to connect them with electronic health

records and public health reporting systems.

Emergency Responder - all the initial standards needed to support

transfer of information among hospitals and emergency first responders

such as paramedics when delivering care in the field, such as might

occur in a Katrina-like event.

Also on December 13, the panel approved a Privacy Framework which

provides a mechanism to categorize all the various privacy policies

that exist in this country. This is important, since security

technology to protect confidentiality can only be implemented by first

understanding the policies which need to be enforced.

What are the next steps? All of the work done by HITSP on consumer

empowerment, labs and biosurveillance will be "recognized" by HHS

Secretary Michael Leavitt this month, except for the HL7 2.5.1 message

(used to communicate lab results) and the OASIS HAVE standards (used

to report hospital resources) which will be recognized in June 2008.

Recognition means that federal procurement will require these

standards to be included in systems deployed for federal government

use. Also, these standards will be included in the Certification

Commission for Healthcare Information Technology in 2008 and 2009,

encouraging vendors to incorporate them into electronic health

records, personal health records and hospital information systems.

As more and more clinicians use electronic health records and

interoperability standards become more common, care will become more

coordinated, improving quality and reducing costs. Standardization

also lays the foundation for patients to be move involved with their

care by getting access to all their healthcare data.

Creating a secure, interconnected healthcare system is a journey, but