DirectTrust Launches Consensus Body, Patient Matching Data Standard

DirectTrust has launched an initiative to develop a new data standard to support a voluntary nationwide patient matching ecosystem.

The Privacy-Enhancing Health Record Locator Service (PEHRLS) Ecosystem Consensus Body aims to profile existing data standards and create new standards as needed for a privacy-enhancing record locator.

The new standard will define electronic interactions among identity providers, EHR platforms, health information exchanges (HIEs), health information networks (HINs), and a record locator service (RLS).

"Managing identity and health information interoperability in healthcare is a special problem unlike other identity and identifier topics," Scott Stuewe, DirectTrust President and CEO, said in a press release. "To be useful as a mechanism for assembling a longitudinal health record, a system also needs to enable access to the locations where records are available for the individual."

"DirectTrust is ideally suited to be leading this effort," Stuewe continued. "We are at the intersection of identity-assurance and health information exchange, as well as our members represent the actors that would have to implement such a solution."

The new standard will define a model that the private sector could deploy voluntarily or with the support of government funding or encouragement in the future.

Deployment of such a data standard could improve efficiency and reduce costs for query-based exchange, Direct exchange, and patient-mediated exchange by cutting infrastructure requirements and computing costs. Such a model could also enable a longitudinal health record for patients.

The anticipated benefits of the PEHRLS Ecosystem standard include:

• A privacy-enhancing record locator service that can support, potentially, 100 percent patient matching success.
• Identity-assurance provided by Identity Providers (IdPs) that enable access to the shared identifier service.
• Patient access to their health data from multiple locations with a single credential
• Improved fidelity of patient matching for all mechanisms of exchange.

DirectTrust seeks Consensus Body members from healthcare, government, information technology, interoperability, and systems integration sectors. Those interested in joining the PEHRLS Ecosystem Consensus Body may contact [email protected].