The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced today that it has awarded DirectTrust.organd the EHR/HIE Interoperability Workgroup, led by New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), each Exemplar HIE Government Program Cooperative Agreements.
Though NYeC will mainly focus on the certification and interoperability portion of this project, DirectTrust.org will use its grant to play a large role in the privacy and security standards for health information exchange (HIE) direct messaging.
Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), which is a DirectTRust.org partner, Executive Director Lee Barrett told HealthITSecurity.com back at HIMSS13 of ONC’s plans and the potential for DirectTrust to be awarded the $280,205 one-year grant. David Kibbe, President and CEO of DirectTrust.org, explained in a phone call today why ONC chose DirectTrust the importance of a privacy and security framework for HIE direct exchange. Having trust in the identity of the person or organization of whom the information is exchanged is a must for the healthcare industry.
Whether it’s going from one doctor to another, a doctor to a nurse etc… those liabilities and risks around privacy, security and identity really have to be tightly assured. So that’s where the role of DirectTrust.org comes into play, as we have been working to develop a set of standards and policies around privacy, security and identity so that the participants in directed exchange can be comfortable and have confidence that [the data going through] exchanges will remain encrypted and they won’t be sent to the wrong person. And that the wrong person won’t be able to use the directed exchange specifications and protocols for the wrong purposes.
DirectTrust.org launched its Pilot Trust Framework Program that’s the basis for its accreditation program and is geared toward Health Information Service Providers (HISPs), Certificate Authorities (CAs), and Registration Authorities (RAs) back in October and 12 HISPs have joined since. “They act on behalf of the email users to assure that layer of security and trust and assure the parties that provide these services are held accountable over time,” Kibbe said.
DirectTrust.org, along with EHNAC, will now aim to be the only accreditation organization to administer the direct exchange accreditation. With ONC and NYeC, it will work to roadmap and the milestones to achieve before Stage 2 Meaningful Use comes into effect in January 2014.