CCHIT Certification

On July 18th, 2006, GE Healthcare announced that its Centricity® Electronic Medical Record (EMR 2005 Version 6.0), a well-recognized comprehensive electronic health record (EHR), received certification from the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHITSM) for Ambulatory EHR 2006.

The movement towards certification is a monumental step in the healthcare industry, and indicates a shift in the market that may help reduce risk for physicians and encourage more practices to consider adoption.

The CCHIT CertifiedSM EHR stamp of approval is an assurance to customers that GE's Centricity EMR meets the rigorous functionality, interoperability and security criteria tested by CCHIT, making the system a safe and proven choice.

Through private sector efforts, GE helped to pioneer CCHIT's certification program, and has continued its commitment by:

  • Co-founding the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Vendors Association (EHRVA), and rallying the support and collaboration of hundreds of EHR vendors
  • Dedicating significant time, resources and subject matter experts to serve on the various CCHIT workgroups
  • Participating as one of the first EHRs tested during CCHIT's pilot program earlier this year


About EHR Certification

About EHR Certification

CCHIT CertifiedSM product certification designates that a healthcare information technology product has been tested against a comprehensive set of functionality, interoperability and security criteria and has passed inspection of 100 percent of the criteria.

CCHIT's electronic health record certification provides an objective set of criteria against which health information technology products can be measured, enabling purchasers to reliably make an investment in those products and to assuring healthcare consumers that they can trust their healthcare information to be stored in those systems.

CCHIT's certification compliance criteria and its design for a certification inspection process have been thoroughly researched, taking into account the state of the art of EHRs and available standards, and comparing certification processes in other industries and other countries.


About the CCHIT Certification Program

About the CCHIT Certification Program

CCHIT's certification program is reflective of the broad constituency base of the organization's all-volunteer Work Groups and Board of Commissioners.

CCHIT's Certification program sets a healthcare IT industry bar for:

  • Functionality (ability to create and manage electronic records for all patients, as well as automating workflow in a physician's office),
  • interoperability (ability to receive and send electronic data to other entities such as laboratories), and
  • security (ability to keep patients' information safe).


CCHIT's inspection process is based on real-life medical scenarios designed to test products rigorously against the clinical documentation needs of providers and the quality and safety needs of healthcare consumers and payers.

CCHIT's certification program is expected to improve healthcare information technology adoption by physicians and other clinicians who are not technology experts, and is therefore expected to improve the quality and safety of care delivered to healthcare consumers.


About CCHIT

About CCHIT

CCHIT is the recognized authority in the United States for certifying EHR products – an independent, nonprofit, public/private organization that sets the benchmark for healthcare information technology.

CCHIT was founded in July 2004 by three healthcare information technology (HIT) industry associations - the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) and The National Alliance for Health Information Technology (Alliance).

CCHIT's mission is to accelerate the adoption of robust, interoperable healthcare information technology throughout the United States by creating an efficient, credible, sustainable mechanism for the certification of healthcare IT products.

In September 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded CCHIT a three-year contract to develop and evaluate certification criteria and an inspection process for ambulatory (office and clinic) EHRs, inpatient (hospital) EHRs and the networks through which they interoperate.

The goals of CCHIT product certification are to:

  • Reduce the risk of HIT investment by providers
  • Ensure interoperability (compatibility) of HIT products
  • Enhance the availability of HIT adoption incentives from purchasers and payers
  • Protect the privacy of personal health information


CCHIT operates under the direction of a 19-member Board of Commissioners led by Chairman Mark Leavitt, M.D., Ph.D. Commissioners represent a range of stakeholders including providers, vendors, payers and purchasers, public health agencies, quality improvement organizations, clinical researchers, informatics experts, government agencies and consumers.

For more information, visit www.cchit.org.

CCHITSM is a service mark of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology.