The American National Standards Institute (ANSI

Ansi

Ansi is a village in Kaarma Parish, Saare County, on the island of Saaremaa, Estonia....

) Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) was created in 2005 as part of efforts by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is a staff division of the Office of the Secretary, within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...

 (ONC, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services

United States Department of Health and Human Services

The United States Department of Health and Human Services is a Cabinet department of the United States government with the goal of protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is "Improving the health, safety, and well-being of America"...

) to promote interoperability in health care

Health care

Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

 by harmonizing health information technology

Health information technology

Health information technology provides the umbrella framework to describe the comprehensive management of health information across computerized systems and its secure exchange between consumers, providers, government and quality entities, and insurers...

 standards. HITSP is chaired by John Halamka

John Halamka

John D. Halamka is a physician and technology leader who focuses on the adoption of electronic health records and the secure sharing of healthcare data for care coordination, population health, and quality improvement.-Early life, education, and early career:...

, MD, CIO of Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

.

Membership

Membership is by organization and there is currently no cost to join. Volunteers commit time to working on standards harmonization efforts as prioritized by the American Health Information Community (AHIC).

Goals

According to their website, HITSP's mission is to "serve as a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors for the purpose of achieving a widely accepted and useful set of standards specifically to enable and support widespread interoperability among healthcare software applications, as they will interact in a local, regional and national health information network for the United States."

HITSP is generally organized around Use Cases, which are profiles of specific interoperability needs that have been identified by AHIC as being important national priorities. The initial 2006 Use Cases were:

• Consumer Empowerment
  • Registration Summary
  • Medication History
• Electronic Health Records (EHRs)
  • Laboratory Result Reporting
• Biosurveillance
  • Visit
  • Utilization
  • Clinical Data
  • Lab and Radiology

The 2007 Use Cases are:

• Consumer Access to Clinical Information
  • Access to Clinical Data
  • Provider Permissions
  • Personal Health Record (PHR) Transfer
• Emergency Responder EHR
  • On-site Care
  • Emergency Care
  • Definitive Care
  • Provider Authentication and Authorization
• Medication Management
  • Medication Reconciliation
  • Ambulatory Prescriptions
  • Contraindications
• Quality
  • Hospital Measurement and Reporting
  • Clinician Measurement and Reporting
  • Feedback to Clinicians

External links

• Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel website