COLLABORATIVE CALLS APPROVED HL7 EHR DRAFT STANDARD “SPRINGBOARD” FOR INTEROPERABILITY

CHICAGO, July 28—The EHR Collaborative, a group of organizations representing key stakeholders in healthcare, is urging the industry to use HL7’s recently approved Electronic Health Record System Functional Model (EHR-S) Draft Standard for Trial Use (DSTU) to facilitate improvements in the exchange of health information.

Applauding the unanimous approval of the EHR-S DSTU by HL7’s Board of Directors, Linda Kloss, RHIA, CAE, executive vice president and CEO of the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), called the draft standard a “springboard for interoperable health information exchange.” Kloss added, “As a next step, the industry must now define data content and data standards for the model. This is important because as technology begins to allow us to exchange health information across providers and organizations we must make sure that the data is universally understood.”

The EHR-S DSTU is also expected to help guide the development of the recently announced voluntary private sector EHR product certification. “HL7’s draft standard provides a strong framework for defining the EHR certification criteria,” according to Steve Lieber, CAE, president and CEO of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS). “The broad industry support already achieved by the model paves the way for any initiative aimed at increasing adoption of ambulatory EHR products.”

The EHR Collaborative assisted HL7 in the development of the EHR-S DSTU through extensive outreach efforts to gather industry input needed to refine the model’s functional outline before it went to vote last March.

“A lot of work went into the development and approval of this EHR draft standard. Now we need to get it out there and put it to effective use,” said Scott Wallace president and CEO of The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (The Alliance). “Over the next two years of the draft standard period, it will be important to continue refining it into a full standard, which the industry can then use to enhance EHR products and to standardize the exchange of health information.”

The EHR Collaborative is a joint collaboration involving AHIMA, American Medical Association (AMA), American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA), College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), eHealth Initiative (eHI), HIMSS, and The Alliance. The goal of the EHR Collaborative is to facilitate rapid input from the healthcare community in this and other development initiatives that advance the adoption of information standards for healthcare.