Nick Gawrit, President of heartbase, Inc., has been selected to serve on the Cardiovascular Medicine Work Group which is one of 19 work groups sponsored by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT). CCHIT is a recognized certification body for electronic health records and their networks in addition to being very involved in health care reform as stipulated within the Health Information Technology American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA/HITECH). Findings will be released by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology and its Advisory Committees. The Cardiovascular Medicine Work Group consists of a variety of healthcare professionals and stakeholders and will review the Federal government's activities as defined by ARRA legislation and further develop certification criteria for Cardiovascular Medicine to specifically "recommend optional criteria and test scripts to other certification categories to address the unique needs of office-based cardiovascular physicians and practices with a goal of improving health IT adoption in that specialty medicine group." Nick's experience and expertise in cardiovascular information systems development and deployment, data analysis and system integration will lend valuable input into the CCHIT initiative. www.cchit.org
