This morning I joined a panel discussion about Standards at the HIT Symposium at MIT.

We had a great panel discussion, moderated by Janet Marchibroda (Chief Healthcare Officer at IBM) that included Christine Bechtel (Vice President, National Partnership for Women and Families Patrick Gallagher (Deputy Director at NIST) and me.

Patrick provided an overview of NIST and the work the government is doing to ensure selected healthcare standards perform as advertised, are implementable, and usable.

Christine described the role of the HIT Policy Committee and its workgroups.

I described the current HITSP Tiger Team work, the standards committee/workgroups including their charge, purpose, milestones.

Here's my presentation that describes all the latest standards work for the country.

On the last slide, you'll see our deadlines:

HITSP ARRA Deliverables will be approved and delivered to ONC on July 8

The HIT Standards Committee Workgroups finish their initial naming of standards and certification criteria by July 15

All this work is presented publicly at the HIT Standards Committee on July 21.

The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking process then begins and we'll see a finished Interim Final Rule by December 31.

A whirlwind of activity!

John Halamka, MD, blogs regularly at Life As a Healthcare CIO.