United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) - 2012

Summary: The United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) is an ISO/IEC 11179-compliant metadata registry of health care standards. (ISO/IEC 11179 is an international standard for representing metadata for an organization in a metadata registry.)

This registry has been developed through the collaboration of several health information organizations and Federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Military Health System (MHS), the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). Collectively, these organizations recognize the need for a net-enabled registry of health care standards to be maintained over the long term.

USHIK serves as the essential metadata registry support for various health care data initiatives and has provided the single axis of continuity for various approved standards, elements, code sets, references, and additional objects at the Federal level for more than 10 years. The USHIK registry focuses on supporting initiatives and the participating Federal government health care agencies by cataloging each selected initiative and providing a platform for maintaining and harmonizing standardized approved data elements and their metadata (characteristics) across multiple organizations, agencies, and entities.

In order to strengthen the functions of USHIK, Data Consulting Group is under contract to provide support for the following project objectives.

Project Objectives: 

• Maintain the metadata registry. (Ongoing) 
• Support the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP). A special portal has been implemented in the USHIK application for display, search, and comparison of HITSP-designated specifications. (Achieved) 
• Support AHRQ’s Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS). USHIK supports CQuIPS by providing a portal for the storage, display, search, and comparison of Hospital Common Formats for patient safety event reporting and their technical specifications; versions 1.1 and 1.2. (Ongoing) 
• Provide Support for External Agencies: State All-Payers Metadata. Loading data element information from each State into USHIK enables the cross-mapping and harmonization efforts that must accompany such initiatives in order to align data systems across the States without compromising the abilities of each State to gather the additional information it deems necessary. (Ongoing) 
• House Medicare and Medicaid Meaningful Use data in a dedicated portal in coordination with CMS, Office of the National Coordinator, and the National Library of Medicine. The Meaningful Use Portal page allows a user to navigate to pages covering the Core and Menu Objectives, the clinical quality measures, and the value sets. These pages offer search, analysis, comparison, an download functionality. (Ongoing) 
• Maintain a new standards portal. The standards portal is currently reserved for metadata from specific Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) who have been accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). This portal can be used to research, review, and compare metadata between different SDOs. Currently, metadata from the Accredited Standards Committee X12 5010 data set is included, as is data from the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP). (Ongoing) 

2012 Activities: USHIK redesigned the Meaningful Use Measures Metadata (MUMM) Portal to the improved Meaningful Use Portal. This revamped portal allows health information technology stakeholders such as electronic health record developers, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers to access meaningful use data in a one-stop shop. The re-release of this portal included supporting functionality comprised of a custom interactive informational model that allows users to navigate to meaningful use data. It was improved over the course of the year based on the requirements from clients and stakeholders as well as internal business analysis. Multiple demonstrations were conducted to communicate its availability and functionality. Specific functionality implemented in support of the Meaningful Use Portal in USHIK included the capability of tools to export meaningful use metadata from USHIK in a variety of convenient formats and supporting links to resources. The AHRQ USHIK team continues to provide support for stakeholders as the initiative evolves.

In 2012, USHIK also released a new standards portal that contains data dictionaries from ASC X12 and NCPDP. The goal of this portal is to register and store data SDOs for USHIK users to access quickly and easily, and be able to compare data elements across difference SDOs.

Preliminary Impact and Findings: The project has no findings to date.

Target Population: Not Applicable

Strategic Goal: Develop and disseminate health IT evidence and evidence-based tools to improve health care decisionmaking through the use of integrated data and knowledge management.

Business Goal: Synthesis and Dissemination