Federal panel okays EHR security, privacy standards

On Tuesday, the Health IT Standards Committee endorsed a set of security and privacy standards for electronic health record systems that it said would get progressively tougher without holding back wider health information sharing. The committee's security and privacy workgroup clarified requirements that electronic health record systems must meet so both vendors and healthcare providers could use a number of access controls in their electronic health record systems and practices by 2011. The presentation to the Committee was made by workgroup member David McCallie, vice president for medical informatics at Cerner Corp. McCallie said the standards were designed to ensure that the security of health IT systems is powerful enough to protect health information in a variety of private and public sector settings while at the same time promoting the sharing of records.