DirectTrust Wins Approval of Direct Standard™ as ANSI National Standard

WASHINGTON, July 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — DirectTrust today announced that Direct Standard™, the foundation of Direct Secure Messaging, has been approved as a national standard by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). DirectTrust is a non-profit healthcare industry alliance created to support secure, identity-verified electronic exchanges of protected health information (PHI) between provider organizations, and between providers and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.

The Direct Standard™ is a widely-adopted protocol for individuals to send authenticated, encrypted health information to known trusted recipients over the internet. It builds upon existing standards and deployed internet-scale infrastructure for message structure and security, and for public key infrastructure (PKI). The Direct Standard™ specifies a profiled use of these technologies, and adds requirements and specifications for quality-of-service notifications, public key discovery, and building scalable trust relationships among message exchange partners.

“We’re thrilled ANSI has recognized the Direct Standard™ as a national standard,” said Scott Stuewe, DirectTrust President and CEO. “ANSI’s approval clearly demonstrates that the Direct Standard™ meets their highest level of standards, and that the healthcare industry and participants in Direct Secure Messaging can have total confidence in Direct as a secure method of transmitting electronic health information.”

“The Direct Standard™ Consensus Body’s group of PKI and health IT experts took on the careful work of tuning this important specification, shoring up terminology and further enhancing security and privacy,” said Luis Maas, MD, PhD, CTO of EMR Direct and Chair of the Direct Standard™ Consensus Body. “With these updates, this essential and widely used standard will continue to enable secure and interoperable transport of health information and ready access to health data by providers and patients alike well into the future.”

ANSI approved the new standard ANSI/DS 2019-01-V01-2021, The Direct Standard™ on May 13, 2021. It was published in ANSI Standards Action on May 21, 2021.

DirectTrust and the Direct Standard™ Consensus Body encourage the healthcare industry and its stakeholders to continue their use of the Direct Standard™ through Direct Secure Messaging.  Additional information on how to use Direct Secure Messaging may be found in this general overview or this “Get to Know Direct” infographic.

The Direct Standard™ Consensus Body is currently working on edge system integration and the communication of message context. For information on participating in these initiatives, please send an email to [email protected].

About DirectTrust

DirectTrust™ is a non-profit, vendor-neutral alliance initially created by and for participants in the Direct community, including Health Information Service Providers (HISPs), Certificate Authorities (CAs), Registration Authorities (RAs), healthcare providers, consumers/patients, and Health IT vendors. DirectTrust serves as a governance forum, trust community, standards organization, and accreditation body for persons and entities engaged in exchange utilizing the Direct Standard™, supported by DirectTrust’s robust security and trust framework. The goal of DirectTrust is to develop, promote, and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices necessary to maintain security and trust within the Direct Secure Messaging community. DirectTrust is committed to fostering widespread public confidence in the interoperable exchange of health information. To learn more, visit www.directtrust.org.

Media Contact:
Ed Emerman
Eagle Public Relations
609.240.2766
[email protected]