GAITHERSBURG, MD – The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released the first of four installments of a new health IT test method and related software.

NIST and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are working with health IT system vendors, standards organizations that include the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel, certification bodies and system implementers to develop a suite of software tools to support the health IT testing infrastructure.

The tools are intended to help vendors test their health IT products and ensure basic functionality, such as the calculation of body mass index or proper formatting of common electronic health records in XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

The health IT testing infrastructure does not create any new standards, only the tools necessary to test for compliance with existing standards that HHS announced late last year. Testing laboratories will use these tools in the testing component of the certification programs established by ONC.

Ben Stein, director of media relations at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, says the only caveat is how comments to the proposed meaningful use rule and the interim standards final rule may effect the final regulations. The comment period closed on March 15.

"If the final version changes then the test methods would be adjusted accordingly," he said.

ONC has stated its intention to use NIST's National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program to perform the accreditation of testing laboratories.

A new Health IT Standards and Testing External Link Web site has been established to provide more information on the program and the testing infrastructure suite.