Privacy guidelines get HIT standards group's OK
Jean DerGurahian
The Health Information Technology Standards Committee accepted recommendations by its privacy and security work group to update standards and implementation guidelines.
The work group's goal is to move from developing low-level standards to a "higher, more constrained" implementation approach that protects the privacy and integrity of medical data, said Dave McCallie Jr., a physician who is a member of the group. McCallie is vice president of medical informatics for Cerner Corp. The recommendations were made during the health IT committee's monthly meeting as it works toward ensuring health IT adoption under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The committee was created under ARRA to oversee IT adoption.
The group named some standards of data exchange that will be required for use in 2011 as well as clarified different sets of standards that could be chosen from for use depending on the type of information being exchanged. In addition, the work group named specific standards from four different documentation sets that must be used in implementing health IT. The sets were developed by different organizations, including the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel.