CHICAGO – The Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and its partner in health IT advancement, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology – no slackers to the cause – have seen their work skyrocket – since the passage of the stimulus package in February.

HITSP is “working triple time” on preparing to help providers and vendors apply the stimulus package requirements, according to its chairman John Halamka, MD, CIO of Harvard Medical School and CareGroup.
“HITSP is not taking a hiatus or a vacation,” he told attendees of a HITSP Town Hall April 7 at HIMSS09 in Chicago.

HITSP plans to accomplish everything on its slate for 2009, he said, but will focus over the next 90 days on simplifying its recognized use case work into “lightweight interoperability specifications” that should be easily understood and available online. The new instructions are intended to help users speed their ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) preparation by removing the context specificity found in the original use cases, allowing for adaptation.

In the future HITSP will take recommendations from the new  healthcare IT policy and standards committees and continue in its role as an independent standards harmonization organization.

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology is also on overdrive due to the stimulus package. According to CCHIT Chairman Mark Leavitt, MD, since passage of the ARRA in February, the commission has received more than 45 vendor applications for certification. “This is unprecedented. We’ve never seen this volume of applications come in before. We’re already seeing a stimulus effect.”

At the April 16 World Health Care Congress in Washington, D.C., William Winkenwerder, Jr., MD, senior adviser for Deloitte Consulting LLP and the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions cautioned against false hope as the nation strives toward the president’s goal of universal electronic health records by 2014. “We’ve come very far, very quickly, but there will be challenges in trying to create interoperability,” he said.

Winkenwerder, the former assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs said it took the Department of Defense and the Veterans’ Administration almost 10 years to accomplish 50 percent interoperability in a closed system between the two organizations.