Health Information Exchange (HIE)
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT is establishing several "communities of practice" to help its Beacon program establish clinical decision support technologies, care transitions programs, and pharmacy solutions and tools in healthcare improvement projects.
The White House has called for a "universal exchange language" to enable healthcare providers to share health information in real time, in order to modernize and coordinate diagnosis and treatment while incorporating privacy and security of personal data.
In an investment it expects will pay dividends as healthcare IT usage grows apace, Aetna announced Tuesday that it would spend $500 million to acquire Medicity, the Salt Lake City-based developer of health information exchange technology.
In September, Healthcare IT News explained how one lawsuit against a nascent health information exchange could be a sign of things to come as states get their own HIEs up and running.
With a more urgent timeline for data sharing across the country, the government is now rethinking the Nationwide Health Information Network – the NHIN.
The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) has unveiled the first version of the software that will allow simple information exchange between providers, a crucial enabler for the first stage of meaningful use of electronic health records.
Vangent has been awarded a $3.3 million contract with the Indian Health Service (IHS) to support meaningful use interoperability deployment. Its Health Information Exchange Open Source (HIEOS) technology will help IHS meet requirements for EHR certification.
Maine's culture is to "get things done" - and when it comes to improving the quality of care through IT, the state has positioned itself well, said its director of the Office of the State Coordinator for HIT, James Leonard at a regional extension center (REC) educational forum this week.
The Office of the National Coordinator will start real-world testing of clinical information exchanges between healthcare providers using "NHIN Direct" standards and services in late December or early January, according to the connectivity project's director.
"We were hearing a lot of, 'OK, I get that Covisint will help deliver the data back and forth, but what do we do with it? How can we change it into information that will help the physician make better decisions?’"