Direct Project Update

Arien Malec gave an update on the From Direct Project (formerly NHIN Direct) to the October 27, 2010 HIT Standards Committee meeting. One thing Arien said that made me smile was, "I am going to stand by our decision to trust the community." The Direct Project has been such an incredible example of a collaborative process and I was happy to hear Doug Fridsma suggest that this process could be expanded to the development of the S&I Framework.

Below are the slides from the presentation to the committee:

What is the Direct Project? From NHINDirect.org:

The Direct Project develops specifications for a secure, scalable, standards-based way to establish universal health addressing and transport for participants (including providers, laboratories, hospitals, pharmacies and patients) to send encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet. The Nationwide Health Information Network is a set of standards, services and policies that enable secure health information exchange over the Internet. The project itself will not run health information exchange services. Several Federal agencies and healthcare organizations are already using NHIN standards to exchange information amongst themselves and their partners. The Direct Project will expand the standards and service descriptions available to address the key Stage 1 requirements for Meaningful Use, and provide an easy "on-ramp" for a wide set of providers and organizations looking to adopt. At the conclusion of this project, there will be one nationwide exchange, consisting of the organizations that have come together in a common policy framework to implement the standards and services. This project is open government, and as such, contains avenues for a broad range of public participation. See below for more information on participation.