The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) is seeking comments on approaches that will enable providers and other healthcare entities to obtain and manage digital certificates that are cross-certified with the Federal Bridge.

The Federal Bridge is an architecture, designed by the government, to address healthcare IT authentication, privacy and data protection between various parties.

According to Arien Malec, ONC's coordinator for standards and interoperability framework, ONC is seeking comments on the burdens providers face when obtaining and managing federal digital certificates both at an individual and organizational level and suggestions on how these burdens could be minimized.

[See also: $100K healthcare breaches occur daily, survey finds.]

ONC also wants to know if there is sufficient competition in the marketplace to ensure that providers will have access to best pricing and service for digital certification.

In addition, ONC is asking for comments on the role health information exchanges (HIE) and health information service providers could have in providing and maintaining digital certificates for providers and organizations.

Comments are due online here, by June 5, according to Malec.

The HIT Standards Committee’s Implementation Workgroup is also seeking comments on the EHR temporary certification program for Stage 1 of meaningful use. These comments are due by June 17.

According to Judy Murphy and Liz Johnson, co-chairs of the HIT Standards Implementation Workgroup, the workgroup is collecting feedback on the progress of the EHR product certification program now that it has had certifying EHR technology on Stage 1 meaningful use criteria for almost a year. The workgroup will use the comments to make recommendations for Stage 2.

Comments will be collected online via the Federal Advisory Committee's blog, here.

[See also: CCHIT announces new EHR certifications.]