"Administrator and coordinator of the United States private sector voluntary standardization system." ANSI is the official US representative to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

"ANSI facilitates the development of American National Standards (ANS) by accrediting the procedures of standards developing organizations (SDOs). These groups [which in medical informatics, include HL7 and MedBiquitous] work cooperatively to develop voluntary national consensus standards. Accreditation by ANSI signifies that the procedures used by the standards body in connection with the development of American National Standards meet the Institute’s essential requirements for openness, balance, consensus and due process."

A major goal of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) (2006+) is to encourage all federal health care programs to adopt health information technology interoperability standards and integrate these into their software systems by December 2007. The standards are being proposed by the American Health Information Community (AHIC) in association with the ANSI Health Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP).