A key component of the National eHealth Collaborative’s drive to accelerate health IT adoption and use is a national process to prioritize recommended health IT standards initiatives. The prioritization process is based on the analysis of “value cases,” which describe the business utility and projected benefits of creating specifications for specific types and uses of electronic health IT information. Value cases will include an assessment of the feasibility of implementing the proposed standard and the extent of industry and stakeholder commitment, ensuring widespread adoption.

Prioritizing value cases will contribute to accelerating improvement in healthcare quality, safety and efficiency by identifying those initiatives that will create the greatest possible benefit for the greatest possible number of stakeholders. Value cases will be financially supported by stakeholders submitting initiatives, but the Collaborative will also directly support some public value cases where there is an inability of stakeholders to financially support the initiative. Government entities may also contract for specific value cases pertinent to their mission.

When priorities involve standards, the process conveys those value cases to the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) to complete harmonization. The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) then incorporates the new standards into the certification process and the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) utilizes the standards in its information exchanges.