RTI International Supports National Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC)
RTI has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to work with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to implement a process to facilitate the assessment of variation in business policies and practices regarding the privacy and security of health information exchange by individual states and territories. The goal is to develop a process that will allow states to identify and resolve barriers to health information exchange on a nationwide basis.
RTI, in collaboration with the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, will form the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC), consisting of a multidisciplinary team of experts in privacy and security law and in health care management as well as up to 40 state or territorial governments. Together, this team will implement a process to address variations in organization-level business policies and state laws that affect privacy and security practices that may pose challenges to interoperable health information exchange. Enabling health information exchange will improve the quality and accuracy of medical diagnoses, treatments, and prescriptions while reducing health care costs.
The contract is one of four key components of the DHHS health information technology plan for achieving nationwide health care data exchange. The other components include:
- A project to harmonize the health care and technology standards used in health information interchange to address gaps and conflicts in current standards
- A project to set forth certification criteria for the many electronic health care record products and technologies currently available on the market
- A project to develop and evaluate prototypes for the network architecture to assess the feasibility of developing a National Health Information Network prototype
Work resulting from each of these projects will be used by DHHS to develop and refine the business case for establishing the network.
For more information on the HISPC, including information about the request for proposals from state and territorial governments, please visit www.rti.org/hispc.
Additional information is available at these sites:
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