Health IT group sets sights on nationwide health information network road rules

A new federal health IT advisory panel has set to work on setting up a means of governing the nationwide health information network (NHIN) in a way that will earn the trust of healthcare providers and consumers and expand its use by the health care community.

There are no official rules-of-the-road for the NHIN, a basket of standards and services for enabling providers to exchange patient information securely over the Internet. The recently established governance workgroup was chartered - not to set specific standards or policies - but to define a process for assuring secure information exchange, according to the workgroup's members. "We can identify those areas impeding exchange nationwide and how best to address them in governance," said Dr. John Lumpkin, chair of the Health IT Policy Committee governance work group at its first meeting Sept. 3. The panel will make recommendations to the committee in October.