The federal Health IT Policy Committee has recommended that health IT vendors use labels to clarify that their EHR Software is certified to satisfy first-stage requirements for meaningful use in order to ward off potential confusion among buyers about whether systems they are considering will qualify them for the incentive program.
Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has recently asked for comments about its plan to offer "temporary" certification of health IT products and systems which is designed to qualify health IT systems for first stage of the meaningful use plan, which begins next year. A permanent plan will be developed to certify health IT products for future phases of meaningful use.
Under the proposed rule, vendors would be directed to label their products with the date the product was certified. The committee also recommended that technology that is certified during 2010 should contain a label specifying that it has been certified for Stage 1 requirements only.
To help providers keep track of certified products, the committee also urged ONC and certifying organizations to maintain a Web site listing the names of vendors and their product version numbers that have received certification.
