The Certification Commission for Healthcare IT (CCHIT), the group responsible for developing criteria to certify IT products, has named new co-chairs of its five workgroups. The co-chairs for the following workgroups are:

• Ambulatory EHR Functionality: Sarah Taylor Corley, MD, CMO of NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, and Steven Waldren, MD, assistant director at the Center for HIT within the American Academy of Family Physicians;
• Inpatient EHR Functionality: Mark Andrew Del Beccaro, MD, clinical director of information services at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle, and Cindy Spurr, corporate director of clinical systems management at Partners HealthCare System;
• Interoperability: Barry Blumenfeld, MD, associate director of clinical informatics at Partners HealthCare System, and Ioana Singureanu, principal consultant at Eversolve LLC;
• Security: Solomon Appavu, director of systems planning at John H. Stroger Hospital and Cook County Bureau of Health Services in Chicago, and John Moehrke, enterprise security architect at GE Healthcare; and
• Certification Process: Michael Kappel, senior vice president at McKesson, and Charles Parker, technology officer at MassPRO.

Approval of final criteria for ambulatory electronic health records is expected later this month and the first vendors are expected to be certified in June. Work has begun on inpatient EHR certification criteria.