Officials of the Drummond Group, Inc., an Austin, Texas-based interoperability test lab, say the company hopes to extend its testing program to electronic health records.

The company is planning to submit to become a certifying body when the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) releases its requirements for certifying bodies for EHRs.

Currently, the only approved EHR certification agency is the private, non-profit Certification Commission for Health Information Technology, but the ONC says it will expand the number of EHR certification agencies to support its new policies on meaningful use of EHRs, which are expected in early 2010.

"Clearly there is a growing demand for EHR certifications," said Rik Drummond, Drummond's CEO. "Drummond Group has been supporting Fortune 500 industries and government by certifying the transfer, identity and cyber security of their Internet information flow over the last 10 years. We have also done testing for the CDC, DEA and GSA. Certification of EHR is a natural extension of our testing program, and we believe we can provide great value for the medical community. We look forward to the publishing of the ONC requirements in the days ahead so we can get started."