Where are the HIT experts?

I was listening in on the HIT Standards NwHIN Power Team call this week. At the end of each meeting there is time for public comment. It is rare that someone from the public calls in. This week someone did. The gist of the comment was that the caller was alarmed at the lack of subject matter expertise in the area the committee was addressing. Since the discussion was about real world implementations of NwHIN Exchange, Connect, and the Direct Project, the best expertise would come from vendor/developers and current implementers. Discussion centered on completion of a table referencing maturity of specifications and extent of industry adoption. The caller had actually taken part in the development of a number of the specifications being discussed and had real-world experience in the area of discussion. Committee members apparently made a number or misstatements or actual erroneous statements. The caller's reasonable recommendation was for the committee to solicit information from subject matter experts before they make their final recommendations next month to the HIT Standards Committee. It is funny but I had the same thoughts about obtaining more expert information myself while listening in on the call. No response was offered to the caller's recommendation. In the past, a number of the FACA work groups have convened panels of experts to provide testimony and recommendations and have incorporated this information into final recommendations.


Some of my concerns with the federal HIT efforts since the change of administrations are that the effort has become fragmented, there often is duplication of effort, more coordination and oversight is needed, and previous groups of expert volunteers with a broad spectrum of representation have been disbanded. New efforts have been started from scratch, overseen by contractors whose skills are more in the realm of project management than technological expertise. The S&I Framework is one example. I was frustrated when listening to some of the early meetings because many of the participants were unaware of previous HIT efforts and many of their understandings were mistaken. Perhaps I was part of the problem because my intolerance led me to pursue other activities. Lately, I have been glad to see that more real experts are joining the S&I Framework effort.