It was only a matter of time as rumors have been swirling around for sometime now but CCHIT has announced the formation of an Advisory Task Force (ATF) to provide guidance to CCHIT on what should and should not be included as part of a PHR certification process.

While the announcement was extremely thin on details, I did some digging and came up with the following.

PHR attributes that may be considered for certification include:

• Privacy: Of course, and we definitely need it as HON is inadequate,
• Security: Why not and logical follow-on to privacy,
• Interoperability: A CCHIT favorite – to be expected but unlikely to be necessary – market will rule on this one,
• Functionality: No, they don’t need to go here, let the market decide what functionality is desired.

Proposed timetable:

• May 2009: Publish criteria and test scripts
• July 2009: Launch certification program
• October 2009: First certified products announced

Odd, but somewhat predictable cast of characters on the ATF. You have the 3 platform play representatives in Dossia (Rick Benoit), Google (Missy Krasner) and Microsoft (Michael Stokes), several from non-profits (academia, government and others) and a couple of health plans.

Who’s missing?

A tried and true PHR vendor that is actually out there with a product and has been doing it for a few years. This panel is currently burdened with either big company representatives or what appears to be those who have never worked in a small company needing to take a product to market. There are unique challenges for such an entity that this ATF will have a difficult time empathizing with.

Hopefully there is still time to add another to the group.