One of the biggest keys to unlocking the full benefits of electronic health records is creating a situation in which providers in various specialties can share information with each other. A new proposal may put the nation on a path to this kind of interoperability.

The Health IT Standards Committee recently sent a list of recommendations to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT suggesting a single set of vocabulary for standards reporting, which could be incorporated into the second stage of meaningful use, according to Government Health IT.

The standards could be used to create a single vocabulary that would be used by all providers who have implemented EHR systems. This is expected to facilitate the transfer of patient records.

“Today we have achieved something that some of us have been working on for a decade. For the first time in history, we will be declaring a single set of standards for each domain with one set of implementation guides,” said Dr. John Halamka, co-chair of the committee, according to the news source.

Whether or not the recommendations will be incorporated into the second stage of meaningful use remains to be seen, as the National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari previously told HIMSS News that the committee should focus on short-term goals, such as the coding data sets for clinical care metrics the committee was already working on, and not worry about bigger picture items like meaningful use.