Task force to review standards for ONC-certified tech

The Health and Human Services Department's health IT agency convened a task force to assess whether to maintain or phase out its existing standards for health IT products.

While it's important to introduce updated standards, "we also need to look back and talk about pruning, as well," said Micky Tripathi, chief of the HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, at a meeting of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee on Thursday.

The Adopted Standards Task Force will be part of HITAC, which advises ONC.

The task force will review standards and implementation specifications that ONC sets for health IT products certified through the agency's health IT certification program, such as those established through ONC's 2020 information-blocking and interoperability rule and 2015 health IT certification program rule.

The task force will present recommendations for HITAC to approve Sept. 14.

"This is a process where the industry gets to provide a 'check,'" said Seth Pazinski, director of the strategic planning and coordination division at ONC, at Thursday's meeting. "The HITAC recommendations that we'll get from the task force will be an input to inform future ONC rule-making."

Pazinski shared an initial list of 17 task force members, including Jim Jirjis, chief health information officer at HCA Healthcare; Vassil Peytchev, a lead technical advisor at Epic Systems; and Deven McGraw, who leads data stewardship and data sharing at Ciitizen, a company she co-founded and that's since been acquired by Invitae.

The group will be chaired by Hans Buitendijk, director of interoperability strategy at Oracle Cerner, and Steven Eichner, health IT lead at the Texas Department of State Health Services.

ONC is seeking additional volunteers who are HITAC members and interested in joining the task force. So far, nine of the task force's members also sit on HITAC, two are federal representatives from the Veterans Affairs Department and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and six are outside experts.

Under the 21st Century Cures Act, ONC is required to convene stakeholders to review the agency's existing standards and implementation specifications five years after the federal legislation took effect in December 2016. ONC is directed to repeat that review every three years.

Members of the public who aren't part of the task force will have an opportunity to share input during public comment sections of task force meetings, Pazinski said. The date for the first task force meeting hasn't been set, but will likely be in the next two weeks, he added.