An illusion in the minds of many is that Center for Certification of Health Information Technology (CCHIT) certified EHR systems are interoperable. To many, this would be one of the major if not sole reasons for CCHIT to exist. The surprising reality is that this is something that CCHIT certification does not currently include. Another reality is that ‘interoperability’ is a loaded term that is very difficult to define among proprietary EHR’s. This CCHIT announcement is interesting in that CCHIT will “…begin building a testing resource to evaluate compliance of electronic health records (EHR) and networks with certification criteria for interoperability. This new initiative will make it easier for health information technology companies to add standards-based information exchange capabilities to their products and prepare those products for certification. The testing software will be developed under an open source license so that it is free and publicly available, and the Certification Commission will use the software running on a secure platform during its inspection of a product’s compliance…”
