The Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) has approved personal health record (PHR) certification recommendations submitted by its PHR Advisory Task Force. 

With the PHR market still evolving, the task force agreed that certification should accommodate a diversity of models and architectures for delivering personal health information to consumers.  The group also emphasized that certification should be simple for consumers to understand, offering them a “safety zone” where they could be comfortable that their information was private and secure.

The Advisory Task Force, which includes healthcare, corporate and consumer representatives, said it will continue to provide input about PHR certification to CCHIT’s PHR Work Group. In addition, the Task Force recommended that the PHR Work Group and the commission’s Interoperability Work Group collaborate to develop criteria that will ensure that PHRs can send and receive data from as many potential sources as possible, such as ambulatory EHRs, hospital EHRs, payors, pharmacies and labs.

The PHR certification program is expected to launch in mid-2009.