UDS+ Test Data Only Testing Method

[anthonygalba]

The current version of UDS+ synthetic testing assumes the one developing and testing the UDS+ product, and the organization submitting the data are the same entity. This is not always the case. An EHR vendor, like Epic, will develop and test their UDS+ product, then deliver that to a health center who will use it to submit UDS+ data.

Can HRSA define some sort of testing only track for EHR vendors to do testing directly with HRSA? We would suggest a test-data only testing environment and less stringent interconnection agreement, as the EHR vender would never actually submit any real patient information. This would reduce the burden and IT cost on the health centers, as the work of testing and validating would be shifted to the EHR vendor. This way we would not need to stand up any special testing environments with one of our customers to do integration testing.

The way the synthetic testing process is written today, we will need to partner with our customer and build custom test environments on their IT stacks, which is much more work than having the vendor do testing with HRSA directly.

We realize this is a big ask, and a different direction than how the current ISA / synthetic testing process was written. However, we think this is worth having. We'd expect the yearly updates to the UDS Manual, and any future IG changes, would mean vendors would want to test their updates against HRSA's system yearly.

[nbashyam]

Ticket will be sent to ONC/HRSA BPHC leadership to discuss.