[This story was edited July 8 to clarify that the National Institute of Standards and Technology does not certify technologies; it develops technical standards and test methods].

Federal policymakers and the health IT community are converging rapidly around the need to agree on standard practices for clearly communicating information contained in electronic health records and making it much easier for clinicians to navigate their way around tasks in an EHR.

Healthcare researchers, technology experts and EHR user advocates, bolstered by a new government commitment, are championing the idea that the “usability” of EHR systems is critical to efforts to get the nation’s clinicians to effectively use the software in daily healthcare practice.

The conclusion that uneven or poor usability is a barrier to IT adoption and must be overcome is being advanced strongly by Dr. David Blumenthal, who heads up the Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The ONC boss has put his special assistant, Dr. Sachin Jain, in charge of an internal usability work group to light a fire