Healthcare IT News, By Molly Merrill, Contributing Writer, 11/09/07

CHICAGO – The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology has entered into the next phase of building software capable of testing the Interoperability capabilities of electronic health record systems, officials reported today.

CCHIT is collaborating with the MITRE Corp. on an open source, software-testing framework called, LAIKA, which will make it possible for vendors to test and verify whether their products meet CCHIT certification.

‘MITRE is focusing on health information technology as one area in the health sector where we can serve the public interest,’ said Rob Jensen, healthcare executive director for MITRE. ‘The testing framework for certification of EHRs represents an excellent opportunity where MITRE can help meet one of the nation’s critical needs.’

LAIKA will provide an “interoperability report card” based on the EHR interoperability testing that the certification commission will develop and publish for its 2008 certification inspection process.

‘This project is an important first step in our journey toward testing and certifying the interoperability of health IT systems,’ said Mark Leavitt, MD, chairman of the Certification Commission. MITRE and the Certification Commission are currently engaged in joint technical meetings, scheduling sessions and framework discussions about the software and are welcoming individual and organization contributions to engineering technology for the project.

‘We are excited about this open source project and look forward to a community effort, building a tool that supports the EHR certification process established by the certification commission,’ said Rob McCready, the LAIKA technical lead.

The software will be distributed by Apache 2.0 and will be available to the public free by March 21.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8125