The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has paid a lot of attention to metadata in recent months. The agency launched pilot programs to study proposed metadata standards and officials announced a new data segmentation initiative that builds off of these standards. However, all this talk has sparked concern among some industry insiders.

The College of Healthcare Information Managers recently sent a letter to the ONC urging it not to include metadata standards in stage 2 of meaningful use. The group said in the letter that they support requirements for information formatting, as this could lead to innovation and greater intolerability. However, they feel current standards are too new and unproven to be forced upon providers.

"We do not believe that the meaningful use regulator schema is the appropriate venue to mandate unproven standards or incomplete protocols," the letter stated.

The American Hospital Association also sent a proposal to the ONC calling for officials to delay including metadata standards in the second round of meaningful use.

ONC officials are expected to announce stage 2 requirements sometime early next year.