Today is an unprecedented day and will be known in history for a monumental achievement. People will look back at Tuesday July 13, 2010 as a day which started an electronic revolution of sorts. Today marked the release of what thousands around the nation were eagerly waiting for: the final rule on certification criteria for electronic health records (EHR), better known as “meaningful use.”

We at OA Systems would like to applaud HHS and ONC for the publication of the final rule. Meaningful use will have a major impact on the health IT industry for years to come and thus is a key step in the right direction towards improving our healthcare system. We are still in the process of reading through the final rule, all 864 pages of it, so we will respond with more details as we discern them.

On the e-prescribing front, one thing is for sure: Dr. David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health IT at ONC said in this morning’s briefing that the new rule has relaxed the amount of prescriptions that must be sent electronically. Instead of the proposed interim guidelines which suggested that seventy-five percent of all prescriptions be sent electronically in order to qualify for meaningful use; that number has now been decreased to forty percent.

Let the electronic revolution begin!