Certification Commission Collaboration for Open Source Testing Gains Additional Support

IHE and NIST collaborate in developing free health IT testing tools

CHICAGO  – January 8, 2008  – The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology with its software design partner, the MITRE Corporation, announced today that their work to build a testing tool to evaluate compliance of electronic health records (EHR) with criteria for interoperability, named project LAIKA, will be further advanced by the Commission’s collaboration with two organizations that play major roles in healthcare IT connectivity.

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have worked with the Certification Commission to produce a “framework” document that clarifies each organization’s specific role in developing testing tools for product connectivity and describes how they complement each other.

The Certification Commission, IHE, and NIST, along with their partners, will collaborate where practical to build healthcare IT testing tools, in order to minimize duplication of effort and provide consistency in testing and standards compliance. More information on the new framework for collaboration may be found at: www.cchit.org/collaboration.

“While the goal of fostering standards-based interoperability of healthcare IT systems is a shared one, the roles and requirements of the organizations are different,” said Certification Commission chair Dr. Mark Leavitt.  “For some, this has produced confusion or a perception of duplicated efforts.  Our new framework for collaboration will remedy that."

“The Certification Commission, IHE and NIST all have a need for tools and agree that the industry and public will be served best if tools are collaboratively developed, shared and made freely available to all,” said HIMSS vice president of informatics Joyce Sensmeier.

The newly formed collaboration will make it easier for health information technology companies to add standards-based information exchange capabilities to their products and prepare those products for certification and distribution.

Testing software, LAIKA, is being developed under an open source license so that it is free and publicly available, and the Certification Commission will use the software running on a secure platform during its inspection of a product’s compliance.  An initial focus of the collaboration is a tool to verify standards compliance of a Continuity of Care Document (CCD) sent or received by EHRs with delivery in time for the Commission’s 2008 pilot testing and certification launch.
             
The efforts of this new collaboration will be discussed at several upcoming events:   

  • IHE-North America Connectathon 2008, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago on Jan. 29. This one-day conference will provide an overview of IHE and panel sessions on implementing interoperable systems and health information exchange projects.  
  • CCHIT Town Hall, at HIMSS08 at the Orange County Convention Center, Orlando, on Feb. 25.  This open meeting will report the progress of the Certification Commission’s work for 2008 and provide an opportunity for health IT stakeholders to offer questions and comments.
  • Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS08 on Feb. 25-28 at booth #7363.  This demonstration of multiple health information exchanges using clinical scenarios, including real world applications of EHRs, will highlight the current work of IHE.
  • CCHIT Vendor Briefing:  Interoperability Testing with LAIKA, at HIMSS08 on Feb. 25. This second technical briefing by CCHIT and MITRE staff will demonstrate the work of the project team on CCD testing.

About the Certification Commission

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology is an independent, nonprofit organization that has been officially named by the federal government as a “recognized certification body” for electronic health record products.  Its mission is to accelerate the adoption of health information technology by creating a credible, sustainable product certification program.  The certification requirements are based on widely accepted industry standards and involve the work of hundreds of expert volunteers and input from a variety of stakeholders throughout the health care industry.  More information on the Commission and CCHIT CertifiedSM products is available at www.cchit.org.

“CCHITSM” and “CCHIT CertifiedSM” are service marks of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology.

About IHE

Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) (www.ihe.net) is a global initiative that creates the framework for passing vital health information seamlessly – from application to application, system to system, and setting to setting – across multiple healthcare enterprises. IHE brings together healthcare information technology stakeholders to implement standards for communicating patient information efficiently throughout and among healthcare enterprises by developing a framework for interoperability. Because of its proven process of collaboration, demonstration and real-world implementation of interoperable solutions, IHE is in a unique position to significantly accelerate the process for defining, testing and implementing standards-based interoperability among electronic health records systems.

About the MITRE Corporation

The MITRE Corporation is a private, independent not-for-profit organization chartered to work solely in the public interest. MITRE manages three Federally Funded Research and Development Centers sponsored by the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service. As a national resource, MITRE Corporation applies notable technical and management expertise in systems engineering, information technology, operational concepts, and enterprise modernization and are dedicated to improving the quality of our nation's healthcare through the transformation of healthcare enterprises. 

For more information about The MITRE Corporation and its work, visit www.mitre.org.

About NIST

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory federal agency. NIST's mission is to develop and promote measurement, standards, and technology to enhance productivity, facilitate trade, and improve the quality of life.  NIST's Information Technology Laboratory works with industry, research, and government organizations to make information technology more usable, more secure, more scalable, and more interoperable than it is today. NIST develops the test methods that both developers and users of technology need to objectively measure, compare and improve their systems. To this end, NIST is collaborating with the healthcare industry to advance the use of IT in healthcare systems.