Direct Project will be required in the next version of Meaningful Use

The Direct Project is poised to become the first health Internet platform.

The Direct ProjectThe Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) announced that the Direct Project would be required in stage 2 of Meaningful Use.

As usual the outside world knew almost instantly because of Twitter. Nearly simultaneous posts from @ahier (Brain Ahier) and @techydoc (Steven Waldren MD). More information followed shortly after from @amalec Arien Malec a former leader for the Direct Project.

There are some other important announcements ahead of the official release, such as the end of support for CCD, but this requirement element has the deepest implications. This is jaw-dropping news! Meaningful Use is the standard by which all doctors and hospitals receive money for Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems from the federal government. In fact, the term “Electronic Health Record” is really just a synonym for “meaningful use software” (at least in the U.S. market). Meaningful Use is at the heart of what health IT will look like in the United States over the coming decades.

The Direct Project has a simple but ambitious goal: to replace the fax machine as the point-to-point communications tool for healthcare. That goal depends on adoption and nothing spurs adoption like a mandate. Every Health Information Exchange (HIE) in the country is going to be retooling as the result of this news. Some of them will be totally changing directions.

This mandate will make the Direct Project into the first Health Internet platform. Every doctor in the country will eventually use this technology to communicate. Given the way that healthcare is financed in the U.S., it is reasonable to say that doctors will either have a Direct email address to communicate with other doctors and their patients in a few years, or they will probably retire from the practice of medicine.

It was this potential, to be the first reliable communications platform for healthcare information, that has caused me to invest so heavily in this project. This is why I contributed so much time to the Direct Project Security and Trust Working Group when the Direct Protocol was just forming. This is an Open Source project that can still use your help.

The Direct Project is extensively covered in “Meaningful Use and Beyond” (chapter 11 is on interoperability). I wrote about the advantages of the Direct Project architecture. I helped arrange talks about about Direct at OSCON in 2010, and in 2011, I gave an OSCON keynote about the Health Internet , which featured Direct. I wrote a commentary for the Journal of Participatory Medicine, about how accuracy is more important than privacy for healthcare records and how to use the Direct Project to achieve that accuracy. I pointed out that the last significant impact from Google Health would be to make Direct more important. I am certainly not the only person at O’Reilly who has recognized the significance of the Direct Project, but I am one of the most vocal and consistent advocates of the Direct Project technology approach. So you can see why I think this a big announcement.

Of course, we will not know for sure exactly what has been mandated by the new revisions of Meaningful Use, but it is apparent that this is a huge victory for those of us who have really invested in this effort. My hat is off to Sean Nolan and Umesh Madan from Microsoft, to Brian Behlendorf and Arien Malec, who were both at at ONC during the birth of Direct, to Dr. David Kibbe, Brett Peterson and to John Moehrke. There are countless others who have contributed to the Direct Project, but these few are the ones who had to tolerate contributing with me, which I can assure you, is above and beyond the call of duty.

Obviously, we will be updating “Meaningful Use and Beyond” to include this new requirement as well as the other changes to the next version of Meaningful Use (which apparently will no longer be called “stage 2”). Most of the book will not change however, since it focuses on covering what you need to know in order to understand the requirements at all. While the requirements will be more stringent as time goes on, the core health IT concepts that are needed to understand them will not change that much. However, I recommend that you get a digital copy of the book directly through O’Reilly, because doing so entitles you to future versions of the book for free. You can get today’s version and know we will update your digital edition with the arrival of subsequent versions of the Meaningful Use standard.

I wonder what other changes will be in store in the new requirements? ONC keeps promising to release the new rule “tomorrow.” Once the new rules emerge, they will be devoured instantly, and you can expect to read more about the new standards here. The new rule will be subject to a 60-day commentary period. It will be interesting to see if the most dramatic aspects of the rule will survive this commentary. Supporters of CCR will be deeply upset and there are many entrenched EHR players who would rather not support Direct. Time will tell if this is truly a mandate, or merely a strong suggestion.

Meaningful Use and Beyond: A Guide for IT Staff in Health Care — Meaningful Use underlies a major federal incentives program for medical offices and hospitals that pays doctors and clinicians to move to electronic health records (EHR). This book is a rosetta stone for the IT implementer who wants to help organizations harness EHR systems.

Related:

tags: , , , ,