ATA Standards Portfolio

The mission of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) is to promote access to medical care by consumers and health professionals via information and telecommunications technology. An important element of this mission is to advance the use of telemedicine through the development or identification of technology, clinical, and administrative standards related to the ongoing delivery of health and medical care. Telemedicine allows patients to gain access to healthcare professionals, electronically regardless of their location. It can provide faster, more affordable healthcare services, especially when telemedicine is integrated into the entire health and medical care a patient receives via the traditional in-person environment.

Working to accomplish this mission, the ATA and NIST's Information Technology Laboratory are working together to define a portfolio of standards and guidelines to enable the development and advancement of the use of telemedicine. In particular, ATA and NIST have conducted a series of workshops to identify standards needed to provide ocular care through telecommunications technology. In particular, this effort focused on tele-retinal imaging for the assessment of diabetic retinopathy (e.g., taking images of the eye and evaluating those images to diagnose and treat diabetic retinopathy). This is a mature areas of telemedicine for which there is strong need for a standards portfolio to guide administrators, clinicians, and others involved in ocular telehealth. NIST provided leadership in defining the strategy and subsequent process for establishing the portfolio and as well as expertise in defining the technical (i.e., IT related) standards for diabetic retinopathy. NIST led and hosted the first workshop on technical standards.

The results of these workshops is a consensus-based document that includes the identification of appropriate technical standards, clinical protocols, and administrative arrangements. It will be promulgated as an ATA Technical Standard and be published in the ATA Journal. As a Technical Standard, it will be used to advance the use of telemedicine in fields related to ophthalmology, optometry, and optical engineering.

The next steps are to expand upon this work to help the industry (e.g., eye care practitioners, ophthalmologists, lab technicians, and screening and imaging equipment vendors) use the standard and develop measurements to ensure correct implementation and interoperability. Additionally, the process by which this diabetic retinopathy portfolio of standards was developed will be documented and used as a guide in the development of additional portfolios for other medical disciplines.

Downloads

IHE Open Source Project: XDS software (html file)

Message Maker Prototype (html file)

Healthcare Standards Landscape (html file)

Healthcare Information Standards and Testing, A Concept Paper (pdf file)

Conformance Testing and Certification Framework, White Paper (pdf file)

What is This Thing Called Conformance, White Paper (html file)

Principles for Writing Conformance Criteria (pdf file)

Building HL7 EHR-S Conformance Criteria, Slide presentation (html file)