January 2010 Has Gone So FAST!

This month has passed so quickly! The last panel meeting of HITSP was held on Monday January 25 and I felt a sense of saddness that the intense activity was drawing to a close. I will participate in a few HITSP meetings during February as I am on the HITSP Foundations Committee. For this entry I'll enter copies of a few closing emails that I've received that summarize the past and look to the future.

The first is from Dr. Walter Suarez who is the leader of the Consumer Preferences Tiger Team:

Dear Consumer Preference TT members, colleagues and friends,

On Monday of this week we delivered the final report on the status of our Consumer Preference work to the HITSP Panel, which was received quite well. While we were not seeking action on our RDSS on Consumer Preferences, and our document will not be vetted in public, given its 'draft' condition, we stronlgy believe that the body of work we built around this important topic will pave the way for any future efforts to advance the harmonization and selection of interoperable standards related to the electronic creation, execution and exchange of consumer preferences.

What's next? at the Panel we heard from HITPS Leadership on the plans for HITSP beginning next month. Several details were offered about ongoing support for HITSP's website, its listservs (they will probably become moderated lists), the comment tracking system, which will continue to capture comments on several documents, and other items. No formal meetings of the Board, Panel, TCs or TTs will be convened after February 1 (except perhaps for the Foundations Committee). A more formal announcement will be provided to all in the coming days.

Congratulations and thank you to each and everyone of you for your active involvement and participation in this Tiger Team. A very special thank you goes to our Workgroup Co-Chairs, Janie Bowman-Hayes and Terry Heam (Content Preferences), and RIchard Frank and Don Jorgenson (Privacy Preferences) for their willingness to share their time and experise in leading these groups, and to our Tiger Team Facilitators, Johnathan Coleman, Elliot Sloane and Michael Nusbaum for helping us keep on track, on time, and on point. It was our priviledge to have serve as co-chairs of this group.

Much work remains on consumer preferences and we fully expect that any future harmonization will include the continuation and conclusion of the work we started in HITSP.

Best regards,Mureen Allen, ActiveHealth Management
Walter Suarez, Kaiser Permanente

The second is from Dr. Halamka who is the Chair of HITSP:

FROM JOHN D. HALAMKA, MD, HITSP CHAIRMAN:

Folks:

Thanks for a great meeting on Monday. It was great to see you all, thank you all, and reaffirm our commitment to stay engaged as we await the ONC RFP. I've listed all the ONC grant programs on my blog and you'll notice that $64.3 million has been allocated for Standards Harmonization, Certification, and the NHIN:

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2010/01/grant-programs-from-onc.html

Here's the kind of press we've received about the Panel meeting and about the continuance of HITSP:

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/standards_onc_stimulus_hitsp-39683-1.html

I summarized my comments from the January 20th meeting of the HIT Standards Committee about the Interim Final Rule, Implementation Guidance and HITSP on my blog. You'll see that most of the base standards recommendations from the HIT Standards Committee (based on a foundation of HITSP work) were included in the IFR. The IFR is a regulation, which means that the details provided in it are hard to change. By providing base standards but enabling implementation guidance to be published separately from the regulation itself, ONC allowed evolution and refinement of more specific guidance. The comment period on the IFR closes March 15 and we'll see revisions of the NPRM that are directly related to comments. I think you'll see substantial work on vocabularies and implementation guidance including security/privacy over the next 6 months. The sense of the HIT Standards Committee is that ONC did a great job on a tight timeframe. The comment period will add the final polish.

See my blog for more details:

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2010/01/january-meeting-of-hit-standards.html

I look forward to speaking with you during our monthly check in/education calls.

I'll see you at HIMSS10!

If you have questions or concerns, please email me at jhalamka@hms.harvard.edu


HITSP Administrative Information:

1. As reported this week, ANSI announced that the Government has granted HITSP a no-cost extension to the current contract which will continue through April 30th, 2010. Among other things, this will enable HITSP to have a presence at the upcoming HIMSS conference, and support the quality reporting activities being demonstrated in the Interoperability Showcase there. For full details of the extension please see HITSP 10 N 459 http://tinyurl.com/y8m2lgb

2. As noted, there will be HITSP informational conference calls over the next few months. These will be announced through this listserv. Please stay tuned.

3. The Foundations Harmonization Subcommittee will be wrapping up their work in early February and have the following wrap up meetings scheduled:
· Wednesday, February 3 at 10:30AM/ET
· Monday, February 8 at 2:00PM/ET
· Wednesday, February 17 at 10:30AM/ET

4. All the recordings of the HITSP webinars are posted at hitsp.org/webinars.

If you have questions about the administrative items, please email the HITSP Secretariat at mmaasdeane@ansi.org.


-----------------------------------------------
Michelle Maas DeaneHITSP SecretariatAmerican National Standards Institute25 West 43rd Street - Fourth FloorNew York, NY 10036
T: 1.212.642.4884F: 1.212.398.0023E: mmaasdeane@ansi.org

During the HITSP hiatus, I plan to participate on the HL7 Personal Healthcare Records (PHR)workgroup co-chaired by John Ritter and Gary Dickinson.