ICSA Labs reveals electronic health record testing program

ICSA Labs unveiled a new certification program for electronic health record systems and has certified the first three products in two domains under the program.


ICSA Labs certified the following products as Ambulatory EHR Modules:

• Design Clinicals MedsTracker version 5.0.
• Colonial Valley Software Lectronic Practice Suite version 2.02.0.1.
• OEMR OpenEMR 4.

The federal government, under the Department of Health and Human Services, requires the "meaningful" use of electronic health record systems to improve health care coordination, boost quality of care for patients and their families, and raise privacy and security of records.

The new program from ICSA Labs is aimed at providing verification that the EHR technology health care organizations adopt is technically capable of supporting their efforts to achieve meaningful use and helping health care organizations safeguard sensitive and private patient information contained within electronic records. As part of its rigorous testing, ICSA Labs verifies that complete EHR solutions meet all of the government's requirements.

The company is also testing modular solutions that are only required to meet a subset of the government's requirements and are generally targeted at specific functions, such as prescribing, scheduling and reporting applications.

"This year we are expanding our certification programs into health IT, a much-needed area of focus, to help modernize today's health care system," said George Japak, managing director for ICSA Labs. "With our new focus on safeguarding patient information within electronic health records, we are committed to helping accelerate the adoption of health IT."