The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body for organizations that electronically exchange healthcare data, today announced a collaboration with WEDI, SAFE-BioPharma Association, LLC, eHI, and eP3 Foundation to establish a new Trusted Exchange Accreditation Program (TEAP). This accreditation program will leverage existing industry-wide identity verification, authentication, and privacy/security frameworks and best practices in use across the ecosystem and align with many national efforts including the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology's (ONC's) efforts to endorse the 21st Century Cures Act and other federal requirements including TEFCA, which was created to improve data exchange and enable interoperability across different health information networks (HINs).
"We invite the healthcare industry to join us in working together to establish this important new accreditation program that will continue the much-needed focus on interoperability as well as assure a trusted environment where privacy and security requirements are maintained," said EHNAC Executive Director Lee Barrett. "The formation of this industry collaboration leveraging many of the excellent frameworks and best practices already deployed is an important first step in making this a reality."
With the goal of providing third-party accreditation for healthcare stakeholders including health information networks (HINs), health information exchanges (HIEs), accountable care organizations (ACOs), data registries, payers, providers, vendors and others, this new accreditation program will focus on assuring identify verification and authentication of stakeholders that will utilize the "digital exchange highway" as well as support blockchain, GDPR, cloud, and other underlying enabling technologies.
"SAFE-BioPharma is pleased to be a part of this effort to leverage standards in healthcare, which will lead to improved patient safety, privacy and, a better user experience," said Matt King, Director of SAFE-BioPharma Association.
WEDI President and CEO Charles Stellar added, "This program aligns closely with the efforts of WEDI members and workgroups to facilitate secure and trusted data exchange through blockchain and other enabling technologies. Our association is committed to working closely with the other founding partners, sharing our members' guidance and relationship with the ONC to further this important initiative."
Next steps include forming a steering committee which will be comprised of a broad-based group of 10-15 public private healthcare stakeholders across a wide range of sectors and specialties. Further updates on the group's progress will be announced as they become available.
"The Trusted Exchange Accreditation Program enables new data paradigms, accredited by organizations already known and trusted, to solve and resolve the traditional roadblocks to interoperability and consumer empowerment while, at the same time, addressing the brand new regulatory requirements like GDPR," said Marsali Hancock, CEO of the EP3 Foundation. "We applaud and welcome all organizations entrusted with protecting information to participate."
The EHNAC criteria for each of its accreditation programs establishes foundational requirements for measuring an organization's ability to meet federal and state healthcare reform mandates such as HIPAA, Omnibus, ARRA/HITECH, ACA and other mandates for covered entities and business associates focusing on the areas of privacy, security, confidentiality, best practices, procedures and assets. Visitwww.ehnac.orgfor more details or to review the latest EHNAC criteria.
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