I was offered this text by a well informed and obviously passionate correspondent. It is a defence of some good work that is going on within NEHTA. It seemed sensible to just publish it and let people make up their own minds.
“One NEHTA Team Gets it Right
The announcement of the mindless e-PIP program revealed a very obvious shortcoming in what has been NEHTA’s accepted way of doing things since 2005. By this I am referring to the culture of
- not sharing any information with outsiders
- ignoring public criticism
- development of strategy and specifications without industry input
- ignoring the consequences to business of NEHTA compliance.
The secure messaging arm of NEHTA has engaged in a collaborative effort in partnership with the MSIA to talk directly to IT vendors. A number of technical workshops have already been held, a publically-accessible mailing list has been set up for participants to air ideas/argue with NEHTA, the secure messaging team has actually gone out and spoken to vendors about what should be in NEHTA’s technical specifications.
What forced this change? Basically, NEHTA realised that in order to release a mature secure messaging specification for e-PIP compliance, some creative thinking was needed. Not one of the existing NEHTA ‘packages’ was anywhere near ready for public release, so a decision was made to create a new ‘project’ which essentially is a watered-down secure messaging specification for transporting messages securely, agnostic of the message content. In the parlance of the working group formed to drive this initiative forward, the PIP-Working Group (PIP-WG), a stack of web services is being designed for passing around ‘brown paper envelopes’. This is a major departure from NEHTA’s dogmatic insistence on the use of well-defined payloads, using the horrendously complex WS-Security protocol via NEHTA-defined usage patterns.
The PIP-WG is not a token gathering of lightweights. Architects and programmers from the major IT vendors are represented, including HCN, iSoft, ArgusConnect, Medical Objects and HealthLink.
The PIP-WG is doing what seemed unthinkable in 2008: implementers are being consulted about business use cases, about appropriate technology and about what can be done to minimise disruption to their businesses if NEHTA standards are adopted.
The PIP-WG mailing list opened the feedback door a crack, and what began as a torrent of very heated attacks on NEHTA and its broader work program has abated to an ebb and flow of constructive discussion between industry and NEHTA. The PIP-WG is being coordinated jointly by Vince McCauley (MSIA) and by Tina Connell-Clark (NEHTA), and NEHTA’s decision to allow public posting of more than just technical information by its staff is fostering an atmosphere of trust and cooperation between groups who have regarded each other for many years almost as adversaries, not partners.
Is this a genuine thaw, or once the demands of e-PIP recede will the doors be slammed shut again? If
Comment:
The reason that the correspondent had for writing this is that there is internal keenness to see much more collaborative work of the sort described here happen in all domains. They also want to be able to have these and other efforts go forward in a constructive and appropriate fashion without too much uninformed push back from the many external forces and stakeholders that have become so deeply frustrated with NEHTA they have essentially given up and indeed may have become antagonistic.
If this is a straw in the wind – or maybe a ‘green shoot’ (as we hope we are seeing as we move out of the GFC!) of really constructive change one can only welcome it!
It could be that over five years later we might see some progress. I sure hope so as I can then stop typing!
David.
What are the chances NEHTA will turn to industry for advice and guidance on other important ehealth activities for which there are many?
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