The proposal described below will serve as a reference implementation to illustrate the best practices and standards to follow at the national level for implementing a healthcare network. The following are the major user cases and features that will be implemented by the NHIN prototype.

Architectural Requirements

• Security at all levels
• Privacy of patient information
• Auditing and Logging
• Published interfaces for interoperating in key functional areas
• User Authentication and Access Control
• Security Policies
• Data de-identification
• Patient identity protection
• Patient resolution within and across domains

Requirements of Use Cases

• These use cases are to be implemented within a RHIO (intra RHIO)
• Patient demographics exchange
• Patient continuing care health information exchange
• Adverse Drug Event Reporting
• Lab order routing and report delivery
• Other agreed upon use cases
• These use cases are to be implemented between the RHIOs and HIEs (inter RHIO)
• Patient look up
• Patient continuing care health information exchange
• Other agreed upon use cases

Testing Requirements

• Operate on real healthcare data within and among RHIOs and HIEs
• Demonstrate interoperability between RHIOs and HIEs