Data & Technical Standards: Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)

The Office of the National Coordinator established the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) - a public - � private partnership with broad participation across more than 300 health related organizations - to identify and harmonize data and technical standards for healthcare. HITSP operates with an inclusive governance model established through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

HITSP works to:

• Harmonize standards to use for specific priorities advanced by the American Health Information Community (AHIC)
• Work with standard development organizations (SDOs) to ensure that standards exist to meet health needs
• Ensure specific guidance exists to unambiguously implement harmonized standards
• Foster the availability and use of health information technology standards nationally

HITSP accomplishes the harmonization of standards by:

• Developing Interoperability Specifications (IS) that identify harmonized standards and provide detailed technical specifications for how those standards need to be used
• Working with healthcare organizations and standards development organizations to ensure that standards are available for use nationally

In its first year, the HITSP developed three sets of Interoperability Specifications that included 30 consensus standards and more than 800 pages of specific implementation guidance that describes how these 30 standards need to be used.

The Interoperability Specifications can be retrieved from the HITSP Web site using the following links:

• Electronic Health Record-Laboratory Results Reporting (HITSP/IS-01)
• Biosurveillance-Connecting to Clinical Care (HITSP/IS-02)
• Consumer Empowerment-Registration and Medication History (HITSP/IS-03)

These Interoperability Specifications were approved by the American Health Information Community (AHIC) and recommended to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Michael O. Leavitt for his recognition. HITSP is now working on new priority areas in the second year of its activities.