Fellows and faculty from the UAMS/Arkansas Children’s Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program helped develop and test a new pediatric health IT certification program for electronic health records (EHR), in partnership with industry and experts from across the nation.
The Drummond Group LLC announced its new Pediatric Health IT Certification Program on Oct. 4. Drummond created the program in response to the 21st Century Cures Act, which recommends voluntary certification of health IT for pediatric health providers. The certification is based on requirements reviewed and included in the HL7 Pediatric Child Health IT Functional Profile (PCHIT FP), published in 2022 to update pediatric functionality for EHRs.
The UAMS Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program has been involved throughout the last several years of work to raise awareness about the need for better data standardization in pediatric EHRs, and specifically, the HL7 standards work and Drummond’s efforts to codify those standards into a certification program, including: Clinical Informatics Fellowship Program Director Dr. Feliciano “Pele” Yu, Jr., and fellows Daniel Liu (2022 graduate, now UAMS faculty), Lori Wong (2022 graduate), and Obeid Shafi (senior fellow at Arkansas Children’s Hospital).
With the most recent Drummond Group project, the Arkansas team were part of a national expert advisory panel, and Arkansas Children’s Hospital (ACH) served as a program review project site for the standards before they were rolled out nationwide. The result is a set of mandatory criteria for health IT developers looking for pediatric EHR certification, plus the option for evaluation against advanced criteria in specific functional areas to gain special recognition for efforts to move pediatric health IT forward. These “advanced badges” cover specific functionality for pediatrics medication management, newborn care and screening, well-child care, quality reporting, care team/planning, immunizations, and security and privacy.
“All of this work is about improving the health outcomes of children,” Dr. Yu said. “By establishing industry standards and criteria, we push ourselves to provide better pediatric healthcare nationwide.”
Dr. Yu presented on the work with Drummond at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Experience National Conference & Exhibition, Oct. 7-11, in Anaheim, California.
“Our fellows are fortunate to have a front-row seat to the entire process: from working with HL7 to develop the standards, to working with industry to implement them, and seeing the results tested in real-time at Arkansas Children’s. The fellows leave our program knowing just how much of an impact clinical informaticians can have on patient care, and gain direct, applied experience in how the work is done.”