By Jim Tate, EMR Advocate
LinkedIn: Jim Tate
Host of The Tate Chronicles – #TateDispatches
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Something has happened but we don’t know what it is. My team at EMR Advocate, Inc. has helped over 400 health information technology companies achieve their CCHIT and ONC certifications over the past 20 years. Often the live testing of the applications employs various testing tools to assure compliant functionality. Everything from file validation to FHIR APIs to the ability to send and receive and secure messages needs to be tested by various testing tools to assure full compliance and achieve ONC Certification.
Now, for the first time in 20 years, a Certification tool is down and not available for live testing by any of the ONC-Authorized Testing and Certification Bodies (ONC-ATCB). The ASTP Direct Tool is necessary for the testing and ONC certification of the such criteria as: (b)(1) Transitions of Care, (h)(1) Direct Project, and (h)(2) Direct Project Edge Protocol. Vendors have been waiting for months to test since problems first surfaced over 3 months ago. For those who would like to review the frustration level of developers and ONC Testing Bodies, you can check out the messages in the Google group Edge Test Tool,
Concerns are spreading throughout the community of health information technology developers about the inability to perform live testing. The Edge Testing Tool is supported by third party programmers and although I have made inquiries through both official and unofficial channels I have been unable to glean any relevant information as to the cause of the inability to fix this issue. I have looked through contracts cancelled by DOGE but so far I have not come up with anything. All I know is the crack is there and in three months no one has been able to fix it. If you have any information, please share.