ONC Seeking Comments on Nationwide Health Information Network

The Office for the National Coordinator of Health IT (ONC) is requesting public comments on its Request for Information on Governance of the Nationwide Health Information Network, which was put on public display today by the Office of the Federal Register's Public Inspection. The key component of the proposed governance approach includes a focus on entities that facilitate electronic health information exchange.

The approach also includes a set of conditions for trusted exchange (CTEs) in three areas: safeguards, interoperability, and business practices, a voluntary validation process for entities to demonstrate conformance to the CTEs and to increase provider confidence that the exchange entities meet these requirements, processes to regularly update and improve CTEs, a process to classify the readiness of technical standards and implementation specifications to support interoperability CTEs, and approaches for monitoring and transparent oversight.

The public comment period closes 30 days after the date of publication in the Federal Register. ONC says it expects publication in the Federal Register to occur on May 15, 2012.