On Wednesday, the Health IT Standards Committee's privacy and security work group submitted a letter to National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari recommending that federal officials establish rules on how to certify entities that could issue "digital certificates" to identify users of the Direct Project, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 4/20).
The Direct Project is a streamlined version of the Nationwide Health Information Network and is designed to facilitate simple online exchanges of health data. NHIN is a set of standards, specifications and services offering a common way for exchange between disparate entities (iHealthBeat, 4/7).
According to the work group, entities called "certificate authorities" could issue digital certificates to identify health care providers and others involved in health information exchanges. However, there currently is no policy in place to ensure the trustworthiness of certificate authorities, according to the work group (Modern Healthcare, 4/20).