Direct Lab Transaction Guide Offered

Federal officials have issued guidance on how to exchange lab test results using the Direct Project secure messaging protocol. The Direct Project specifies a simple, secure, scalable, standards-based way for participants to send authenticated, encrypted health information directly to known, trusted recipients over the Internet.

The Department of Health and Human Services' Office of National Coordinator for Health IT issued the guidance, which was based on the recommendation of ONC's Direct-Laboratory Reporting Workgroup. The group determined that any electronic lab reporting method must provide accurate, reliable, confidential and timely delivery of laboratory results from the performing lab to the final report destination to meet requirements of the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments, or CLIA.

To accomplish this, implementations of Direct Project specifications must provide the sending laboratory with positive notification of delivery success or failure in a manner consistent with other methods of electronic result delivery currently in use by accredited clinical laboratories, the guidance notes...