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Consumer Health Platform
Pre-Implementation Certification

A consumer health platform is an electronic system which provides a secure, interoperable environment and personal health information database. The platform enables a range of consumer health applications, most often from different vendors, to run and interoperate.

The consumer health platform also facilitates the sharing of data by the consumer with clinicians, family members and other authorized individuals, as well as with other applications and health information systems (Electronic Health Records (EHRs), Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Hospital Information Systems (HIS)).

This is one of seven offerings to vendors from Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) pre-implementation Certification Services. Health information technology vendors have the opportunity to receive certification for client registries, consumer health applications, consumer health platforms, Diagnostic Imaging (DI), Drug Information Systems (DIS), provider registries and immunization registries.

Scope

The Infoway pre-implementation consumer health platform certification is relevant to market-ready health-information technology solutions involved in storage, management and sharing of personal health information and other health-related data by consumers at the national, jurisdictional, regional or local level.

The scope of the certification is limited to the consumer health platform function of get/list data from a data store that holds personal health information – for example, a hospital information system (HIS), EMR, or EHR infostructure. It does not include the ability of a consumer health platform to write data to another data store holding personal health information.

Certification Criteria

The pre-implementation assessment criteria include:

  • Generic Criteria, applying to all classes of health information technology application or service (for example, requirements having to do with privacy and security),
  • Functionality and Interoperability Criteria, which specifically apply to a consumer health platform, depending upon its system capability(s).

These criteria use the phrase “personal information” and “personal health information” to mean any personal information maintained by the application or service about the subjects of health care. Therefore even basic demographic information falls into the category of “personal information” and is therefore subject to the requirements of these criteria.

The framework for the assessment criteria is shown in the table below. It consists of two classes of criteria:

  1. Solution – Refers to the aspects of functionality, privacy, security and interoperability that need to be assessed.
  2. Management – Refers to how the organization providing the product manages risk, data, system security, as well as third party solutions and services.
Consumer Health Platform Assessment Criteria
Solution Management

Functionality *

Identification

Data accuracy

* A limited number of additional functional criteria may need to be added based on class requirements of each technology solution.

** This criterion applies for consumer health solutions.

Privacy

Accountability

Transparency

Data safeguards

Identifying Purposes & Limiting Collection

Limiting Use, Disclosure & Retention

Compliance

Consent **

Security

User identity management

Access control

Data integrity

Data availability

Audit

Logging

Data confidentiality

Interoperability

Diagnostic imaging

Laboratory

Drug

Shared health record

Client demographics

Provider demographics

Control

Risk management

Data management

System security

Solution accreditation

Third party services

Infoway offers pre-implementation certification for the following technology classes:

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