The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) was created in 2005 as part of efforts by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC, part of the United States Department of Health and Human Services) to promote interoperability in health care by harmonizing health information technology standards. HITSP is chaired by John Halamka, MD, CIO of Harvard Medical School.
Contents |
Membership is by organization and there is currently no cost to join. Volunteers commit time to working on standards harmonization efforts as prioritized by the American Health Information Community (AHIC).
According to their website, HITSP's mission is to "serve as a cooperative partnership between the public and private sectors for the purpose of achieving a widely accepted and useful set of standards specifically to enable and support widespread interoperability among healthcare software applications, as they will interact in a local, regional and national health information network for the United States."
HITSP is generally organized around Use Cases, which are profiles of specific interoperability needs that have been identified by AHIC as being important national priorities. The initial 2006 Use Cases were:
The 2007 Use Cases are: