CCHIT To Test EHR, HIE Interoperability

To follow up yesterday’s news that Healtheway’s public-private partnership with eHealth Exchange (formerly NwHIN) was official, the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology (CCHIT) announced plans to work on a health information exchange (HIE) testing program. This program will feature a new partnership between Healtheway and the EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup.

This collaboration seems to be building on ONC’s previous statements asking for states, providers and vendors to work together on progressing HIE interoperability and making state borders less burdensome toward exchange innovation. The coalition of 15 states, 37 technology vendors and 34 HIEs, representing more than 50 percent of the U.S. population, has created an automated testing program to verify interoperability. The CCHIT release said that the parties involved will work toward a “consensus on national standards, adopting EHR certification criteria and testing procedures as relevant and finalized for Stage 2 of meaningful use.”