The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released testing modules for the 2015 health IT systems certification.
According to a public announcement, these NIST test programs will help providers test their health IT programs under the 2015 Edition Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT certification criteria for electronic prescribing, immunization messaging, syndromic surveillance messaging, and electronic laboratory reporting.
These newly developed tools join several other NIST test modules, including ones for cancer registry reporting tools, healthcare survey validators, transport test tools, and the edge test tool.
NIST developed these tools as a part of the ONC’s recently-released 2015 Edition Health IT Certification Criteria. Published in October of this year, the ONC 2015 Certifications aim to facilitate interoperability between EHRs and health IT systems.
Specifically, the 2015 Certifications call for more extensive testing of health IT systems aimed at increasing interoperability and health information exchange.
“[T]he final rule enhances the ONC Health IT Certification Program by including provisions for more rigorous testing of health IT exchange capabilities, establishing explicit requirements for in-the-field surveillance and transparency of health IT, and by making granular information about certified health IT publicly available through an open data certified health IT product list (CHPL),” the ONC explained in a fact sheet.
NIST was charged with the task of developing test tools that would allow providers to see how their health IT and EHR systems are working in comparison to the ONC Certifications.
“To encourage a more widespread adoption of interoperable health information technology, the legislation calls for the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT, in consultation with NIST, to recognize a program for the voluntary certification of health information technology as being in compliance with applicable certification criteria to meet defined meaningful use requirements,” NIST explains on its website. “In collaboration with ONC, NIST is developing the necessary functional and conformance testing requirements, test cases, and test tools in support of the health IT certification program.”
The four test procedures that ONC and NIST released this week — the electronic prescribing, the immunization messaging, the syndromic surveillance messaging, and the electronic laboratory reporting — are open for public comment ending on January 1, 2016.
