WASHINGTON – A federal advisory group on standards for healthcare IT this summer delivered its first set of recommended standards to the government for use in biosurveillance, laboratory results reporting, patient registration summaries and medication history.

The Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel is working in conjunction with the American Health Information Community, a federal healthcare IT advisory group. AHIC tapped HITSP to make recommendations on data standards for several use cases in the areas of electronic health records, biosurveillance and consumer empowerment. Specifically, HITSP on June 14 approved 92 standards for use cases to:

• Enable clinicians to electronically access laboratory results;
• Make it possible for consumers to permit designated caregivers and other healthcare providers to access patient registration summaries and medication histories; and
• Send ambulatory care and emergency department visit, utilization and lab data to  public health agencies within less than a day.

HITSP, which has a federal contract to work with the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology and the American National Standards Institute, does not create standards. Rather, it makes recommendations based on standards that currently exist.