ushik.ahrq.govUnited States Health Information Knowledgebase | Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

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Overview The United States Health Information Knowledgebase (USHIK) was an online, publicly accessible registry and repository of healthcare-related metadata, specifications, and standards. USHIK contained information from numerous healthcare-related initiatives. Its content included administrative items and other artifacts for Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Quality Reporting Programs, State all-payer claims databases (APCDs), Children’s Electronic Health Record (EHR) Format, and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Common Formats, as well as standards for Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X12, National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), and Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP). The USHIK metadata registry was a neutral repository of metadata from an authoritative source used to promote interoperability and reuse of data. The registry did not attempt to change the metadata content but rather provided a structured way to view data for the technical or casual user. The registry contained core components and specific collections of metadata artifacts. These core components and metadata attributes were based on the ISO/IEC 11179 Standard for Metadata Registries (Part 3 - Registry metamodel and basic attributes). USHIK goals were to provide: A tool to compare and evaluate metadata across multiple metadata standards; A one-stop shop display experience for metadata standards to researchers, clinicians, policymakers, developers, and healthcare metadata users in general; Support to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary’s initiative to promote quality of care by enhancing the quality of data used to provide that care; Harmonization across standards; and Support for various standards-based initiatives from HHS. USHIK is being archived because some of the metadata are maintained by other sites and there is no need for duplication. In particular: The standards metadata are available from the X12 and NCPDP websites. The HITSP is dormant and the materials are no longer available from other sites. The HITSP materials were previously available on www.hitsp.org but this site was disabled. The Common Formats metadata are available from the AHRQ Patient Safety Organization Privacy Protection Center . The CMS Quality Reporting/eCQM metadata are available from the Electronic Clinical Quality Improvement (eCQI) Resource Center . The APCD metadata are available from individual State APCD websites . The Children’s EHR Format metadata and final report are not available from other sites. Portals The USHIK standards, metadata, and other artifacts were separated into several portals based on topic, content type, and audience. Each portal presented a specific subset of content relevant to a particular topic in a manner uniquely useful to the users of that portal. The USHIK Home portal provided an overview of all the information in USHIK. The USHIK portals were: Standards, Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), Common Formats - Center for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety (CQuIPS), CMS Quality Reporting Programs, All-Payer Claims Databases (APCD), and Children’s EHR Format. A summary of each USHIK portal follows. The Standards portal contained healthcare information technology (IT) metadata registered from Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). This portal could be used to research, review, and compare metadata between different SDOs. The standards in this portal were established by consensus and approved by a recognized body that provided rules, guidelines, or characteristics for activities or their results. The SDOs produced a standard related to specific healthcare domains, such as pharmacy, medical devices, insurance transactions, clinical procedures, and administrative data. The Standards portal contained metadata from SDOs such as the ASC and the NCPDP. The ASC X12 was chartered by ANSI in 1979 and develops electronic data...