Healthcare Information Technology

Developing measurements, tools, and prototypes to advance the use of IT in healthcare systems.

• Health Information Technology -- The demand for online medical information and simplified, standardized methods to access healthcare information and services is crucial in making healthcare safe and available to all. Appropriate standards for healthcare information and systems provide the cornerstone to achieving a healthy healthcare infrastructure. Throughout preliminary discussions between NIST and members of the healthcare community, a major theme has emerged -- the plethora of healthcare standards and the need for integrating the standards so that they work together, forming cohesive interoperable health environment. This project seeks to contribute to the healthcare industry by advancing healthcare information standards that are complete and testable and by providing the necessary conformance tests, tests tools and techniques where appropriate.  More...
  
  
• Medical Devices -- The reality that medical devices may need to communicate with tens, if not hundreds, of other devices of varying makes, models, and modalities has not only large market implications but may result in life or death scenarios. Acute point-of-care settings such as a hospital's intensive care unit or patient's bedside require each class of medical device to use the same terminology and data organization to seamlessly and reliably communicate physiological data.
  
  To meet this critical healthcare need point of care medical device communication standards that address plug-and-play medical device interoperability are under development. NIST researchers are collaborating with medical device experts to facilitate the development and adoption of standards for medical device communications throughout the healthcare enterprise as well as integrating it into the electronic health record.  More...
  
  
• Telemedicine -- The mission of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) is to promote access to medical care by consumers and health professionals via information and telecommunications technology. An important element of this mission is to advance the use of telemedicine through the development or identification of technology, clinical, and administrative standards related to the ongoing delivery of health and medical care. Telemedicine allows patients to gain access to healthcare professionals, electronically regardless of their location. It can provide faster, more affordable healthcare services, especially when telemedicine is integrated into the entire health and medical care a patient receives via the traditional in-person environment.
  
  

  Working to accomplish this mission, the ATA and NIST's Information Technology Laboratory are working together to define a portfolio of standards and guidelines to enable the development and advancement of the use of telemedicine.  

• HIT Testing -- This web site, developed in partnership between the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) provides HIT implementers with access to the tools and resources needed to support and test their implementation of standards-based health systems.  More...