ONC Seeks Input on NwHIN Governance

The Office of the National Coordinator for HIT has issued a request for information on establishing a governance mechanism for the emerging Nationwide Health Information Network.

The mechanism will include common rules expressing technical, privacy and security, and business practice requirements to create a consistent trust baseline for stakeholders, according to a PowerPoint presentation from ONC. “In the absence of national guidance, states and other private sector stakeholders/consortiums are beginning to develop state/consortium-unique and potentially conflicting governance approaches to electronic health information exchange.”

The RFI seeks stakeholder comment in five categories:

* Establishment of a set of conditions for trusted exchange (CTE), or “rules of the road;”

* A validation process for entities to demonstrate conformance to the CTEs and subsequently become an NVE, or Networked Virtual Environment;

* Processes to update or retire CTEs;

* A process to classify readiness of technical standards and implementation specifications to support interoperability related CTEs; and

* Approaches for monitoring and transparent oversight.

The PowerPoint presentation is available here. The request for information, Nationwide Health Information: Conditions for Trusted Exchange, is available now here and will be published May 15 in the Federal Register.