HIMSS Electronic Health Record Vendors Association (EHRVA) Moves Full-Force with EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap

EHRVA releases its Interoperability Roadmap as David Brailer, MD, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, calls for collaboration among public and private sector stakeholders to achieve interoperability in his keynote address at the  Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Annual Conference in San Diego, CA.  

(CHICAGO) March 6, 2006 - EHRVA members attending the HIMSS Annual Conference voted to release the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap Version 2.0 – the product of more than a year of collaboration among EHR vendors, standards development organizations and others – to solicit review and input from other HIT stakeholders.  Developed originally in response to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) request for information (RFI) for architectures to support a nationwide health information network (NHIN), the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap is the result of EHRVA members’ intensive efforts to build a model that will achieve interoperability incrementally, based on demonstrated best practices, and standards and methods that have been proven to work.   

“The EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap is the result of thousands of hours of development and coordination.  It represents our perspective on the process that will make interoperability a reality,” said Charles Parisot, Manager, Standards and Testing, GE Healthcare Integrated IT Solutions and EHRVA Standards and Interoperability Workgroup Chair. “We emphasize that interoperability is a process rather than an end-point.  Our first important milestone is to make the Roadmap available for public comment to ensure that it reflects the needs and views of all stakeholders.”

A member of the Interoperability Collaborative formed among HIMSS, EHRVA, IHE and HL7 more than a year ago, EHRVA bases components of the roadmap on the work of these organizations, all of whom support the framework and its plans to advance the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap.

"The EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap spells out clearly what is required to reach the goals for a nationwide health information network.  This roadmap illustrates how the different groups - technical and clinical - must work together to achieve that goal.  I am also impressed with the community that EHRVA has put together to carry out this process.  I have never seen such an open collaboration among vendors which, of course, is critical if this roadmap is to become reality," said W. Edward Hammond, PhD, past chair of WG@ (Messaging and Communications) and Ambassador to Developing Countries, ISO TC215, Health Informatics.

“What makes this roadmap attractive is that the many standards and integration profiles upon which it is built encompass the work of many other organizations and individuals well beyond the EHR vendor community, especially physicians, nurses, information technology architects from a broad range of provider organizations engaged in standards development and adoption initiatives like IHE,” said Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, FACP, Vice President, Practice Advocacy and Improvement, American College of Physicians.

“The industry must define a roadmap for itself or risk having one imposed. The diverse, high-caliber contributors and supporters of the EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap and their commitment to evolving the plan over time make this framework a prime candidate to drive national initiatives,” said H. Stephen Lieber, HIMSS president/CEO.
 
EHRVA offers the Interoperability Roadmap to existing initiatives such as the work of the ONC and the American Health Information Community (AHIC), the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), the Certification Commission on Health Information Technology (CCHIT), and NHIN prototype projects.

The EHRVA Interoperability Roadmap is available at www.himssehrva.org along with information on how to submit comments and suggestions.

About HIMSS EHRVA
HIMSS EHRVA is a trade association of Electronic Health Record (EHR) vendors that join together to lead the HIT industry in the accelerated adoption of electronic health records in hospital and ambulatory care settings in the US. Representing an estimated 98% of the installed EHR systems in the US, the association provides a forum for the vendor community to speak with a unified voice relative to standards development, the EHR certification process, interoperability, performance and quality measures, and other EHR issues as they become subject to increasing government, insurance and provider driven initiatives and requests. Membership is open to HIMSS corporate members with legally formed companies designing, developing and marketing their own commercially available EHRs with installations in the USA. The association, comprised of approximately 40 member companies, is a partner of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and operates as an organizational unit within HIMSS. For more information, visit http://www.himssehrva.org