Progress on health data exchange specs

Seven states and 11 health IT vendors have banded together to support a set of technical specifications to standardize health data sharing among healthcare providers, health information exchanges, and other parties. A bigger vision being eyed by the group is for the set of technical standards to gain support from other states and EHR and HIE product vendors so that the specs help in the country's loftier goal of health data exchange among healthcare providers nationwide. The specifications, available at www.interopwg.org, are the result of a workgroup originally launched in April by the New York eHealth Collaborative. Besides New York, the other members of the group include federally designated entities or HIEs in six other states--California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Oregon.