On February 24th, the HIT Standards Committee held its tenth meeting in Washington, D.C. Dr. David Blumenthal, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, opened the meeting with an acknowledgment of how busy the ONC has been over the last few months, “not just on the rule writing front, but also on the grant making front.” Dr. Blumenthal told listeners that the next few months would mark announcements of additional programs, “designed to support the provider and patient community to make the best use of health IT and to build on the foundation of standards and certification criteria.” (more…)

On January 20^th, the HIT Standards Committee held its January meeting in Washington, DC. Jonathan Perlin, the Chair of the HIT Standards Committee, initiated the meeting with a quote from Dr. David Blumenthal’s recent New England Journal of Medicine article, “Information is the lifeblood of modern medicine. Health information technology is destined to be its circulatory system.” This quote set the tone for the rest of the day, in which committee members examined how standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria — as seen in the recently released Interim Final Rule (IFR) and meaningful use Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) – can transform healthcare.

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