Standards Support

FHA’s role in health IT standards development, harmonization and adoption is that of a coordinator. The program is responsible for soliciting federal input on standards, promoting federal involvement in working groups, panels and standards organizations and sharing the information from these bodies with federal organizations with health-related missions.

FHA promotes standards development, harmonization and adoption through:

• Standards input
• Standards implementation
• Accountability and reporting

To streamline health IT standards adoption – from standards development to testing to execution – FHA performs a critical role in the process. It helps to:

• Champion federal perspective on standards
• Leverage relationships with standards-development organizations to address standards gaps identified by the Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and federal partners
• Support agency planning activities to adopt HITSP standards
• Educate the health IT community on reporting requirements and provide guidance and tools to assist in reporting processes
• Develop a consolidated roadmap that reflects timelines for federal agencies to adopt interoperability standards