Standa

Sep 17, 2012

Vince MacCauley has written an article about standards development in Healthcare IT in Pulse IT. He starts with an interesting claim:

Software standards in general and eHealth software standards in particular provide a methodology and governance framework to encapsulate community agreed best practice in a readily accessible and stable specification.

It’s Vince’s tense that interested me: they “provide” these things - that is, “community agreed best practice” in “readily accessible and stable specifications”.

Err, well, that’s what we aspire to. That we actually provide it… I had no idea Vince thought standards were doing so well!

The article is worth reading (if you are Australian). Vince’s conclusion:

The prospect of a cutting edge, richer eHealth standards landscape is tantalisingly close. However, it will require the eHealth community in general, the eHealth software industry and MSIA members in particular, to provide significant support in order to build effectively on the foundations provided by NEHTA and DoHA.

Tantalising… that’s for sure.