1. HITSP’s Scope  The Panel’s mission is to assist in the development of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) by addressing the standards-related issues impacting the harmonization of healthcare data and networks.  According to Dr. John Halamka, chair of the HITSP and chief information officer at Harvard Medical School, “Harmonizing standards … is not about choosing winners and losers. It’s about identifying the most appropriate standard for each specific use case using objective criteria.” [The IHE model w/ actors, transactions, content, terminology and selected standards]

2. HITSP’s Scale  Over 200 members –17 SDOs –10 consumer groups –18 government bodies –161 other entities  Three technical committees: –Biosurveillance w/83 members –Consumer Empowerment w/79 members –Electronic Health Record w/98 members

3. HITSP’s Major Accomplishment - Completed Interoperability Specifications for the first three use cases:  Biosurveillance – to get data from emergency rooms to Public Health authorities in < 1 day  Consumer Empowerment – for exchanging patient registration summaries and medication histories  Electronic Health Record – to provide electronic access to laboratory results

4. HITSP’s Recent Activities  Encouraging HL7 and ASTM to place clinical data on demographics, medications and allergies from the Continuity of Care Record into HL7’s Clinical Document Architecture format. Result is Clinical Care Document.  Established a Joint WG (including HEC) for liaison between HITSP and the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology.

5. Modest Goals for 2007  Enhance existing Interoperability Specs. through amendments concerned with privacy and security.  Extend EHR use case to include such HIPAA covered entities as X12 claims attachments.  Use limited “volunteer staff” to: –Develop Interoperability Specs for clinical care. Then, expand EHR and Consumer Emp. to include complete clinical care records. –Develop secondary uses for existing Interoperability Specs. –Add clinical device data to EHR and CE use cases.