On the first of May the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology released its initial 2006 criteria for certification of Ambulatory Health IT. The scope of the documents is impressive and reflects what could be reasonably desired in an Ambulatory EHR client system for use in the US context.
The documents sensibly cover the required functionality, important interoperation capabilities and necessary information protection and security needs. After review of these documents and the associated evaluation scripts I would be surprised if 90% of the certification requirements do not fully match Australian needs - with the exceptions being in the areas of terminology, coding and billing.
This is an absolutely invaluable starting point from which NEHTA should be developing similar requirements for Australian Certification after consultation with the relevant users and industry stakeholders.
I particularly like the approach of building in a road map for system developers to permit them to evolve their systems over 2-3 years and to be, via this approach, ensuring a very high standard of system will be in the hands of clinicians only a few years from now.
This is all wonderful stuff and I commend it to readers and the Medical Software Industry Association for detailed review. This work can give us a real head start in the development of Australian certification processes and may mean a few years from now GPs will have access to clinical systems which can really make a difference and which they said they needed back as far as 1997.
David
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