Resources

If you are interested in learning more about exchanging electronic health records, these resources may be helpful. These sites cover topics such as the technology behind records exchange, the necessary standards that an exchange must meet, and ways to test a system as it is being built.

Certification Bodies

• Drummond Group, Inc.
  Leveraging more than a decade's worth of interoperability, conformance testing and certification experience in multiple industries, Drummond Group Inc. is a trusted software test lab and ONC-ATCB that provides effective and efficient electronic health record (EHR) testing to healthcare information technology vendors.
• ICSA Labs
  ICSA Labs has provided vendor-neutral testing and certification for hundreds of security products and solutions for many of the world's top security product developers and service providers. Enterprises worldwide rely on ICSA Labs to set and apply objective testing and certification criteria for measuring product compliance and performance. .
• InfoGuard Laboratories, Inc.
  The first private IT security laboratory to become accredited by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Payment Card Industry Security Council, and Postal authorities.
• SLI Global Solutions, Inc.
  SLI Global Solutions' Corporate Quality System has been audited to and certified against ISO 9001:2008 standards of quality performance. SLI is also a certified lab under the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program of NIST.
• Surescripts LLC
  Surescripts certifies software used by prescribers, pharmacies and payers. Surescripts operates the nation's largest e-prescription network and supports a rapidly expanding ecosystem of health care organizations nationwide. Surescripts is helping to make the electronic exchange of healthcare information more accurate, secure, efficient and convenient.

eHealth Exchange

• The Sequoia Project
  The Sequoia Project is a non-profit, public-private partnership that operationally supports the eHealth Exchange (formerly referred to as the Nationwide Health Information Network Exchange).
• eHealth Exchange
  The eHealth Exchange ("Exchange") is a group of federal agencies and non-federal organizations that came together under a common mission and purpose to improve patient care, streamline disability benefit claims, and improve public health reporting through secure, trusted, and interoperable health information exchange.
• CONNECT Gateway Software
  CONNECT is an open source software solution that supports health information exchange - both locally and at the national level.

Standards and Specifications

• Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)
  IHE promotes the coordinated use of established standards such as the Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine and Health Level Seven International (HL7) to address specific clinical need in support of optimal patient care.
• Health Level 7
  HL7 is the global authority on standards for interoperability of health information technology with members in over 55 countries.
• eHealth Exchange Specifications
  Provides links to specifications currently in effect and revised specifications.
• Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health information Technology
  The ONC not only coordinates a variety of programs to implement the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, but supports the efforts of several related initiatives to facilitate nationwide adoption of health IT. Information on Meaningful Use, Privacy and Security, Certification Programs, and Federal Advisory Committees is located on the ONC Health Information Technology site.
• Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP)
  The HITSP is a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors. The Panel was formed for the purpose of harmonizing and integrating standards that will meet clinical and business needs for sharing information among organizations and systems.

Onboarding and Testing Tools

• Onboarding to the eHealth Exchange
  Find all of the information needed to onboard to the eHealth Exchange.
• NIST Testing Suite
  A series of testing tools for promoting the adoption of standards-based interoperability by vendors and users of healthcare information systems.
• ONC C-CDA Validation Tool
  The goal of the SITE C-CDA Validator is to validate conformance of C-CDA documents to the standard in order to promote interoperability. It is a resource to validate the conformance of C-CDA documents to ONC 2014 and 2015 Certification Editions regulations and objectives, or the base HL7 C-CDA Implementation Guide.
• ONC C-CDA Scorecard
  The C-CDA Scorecard leverages the work completed by an ONC-funded grant and promotes best practices in C-CDA implementation by assessing key aspects of the structured data found in individual documents. It is a tool designed to allow implementers to gain insight and information regarding industry best practice and usage overall. It also provides a rough quantitative assessment and highlights areas of improvement which can be made today to move the needle forward. The best practices and quantitative scoring criteria have been developed by HL7 through the HL7-ONC Cooperative agreement to improve the implementation of health care standards. We hope that providers and health IT developers will use the tool to identify and resolve issues of C-CDA document interoperability in their health IT systems.
• NIST CDA Validation Tool