HIE: State advances, federal initiative
Individual states have taken big steps forward with health information exchange (HIE) while the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT has released guidelines to provide recommended policies and practices for health information service providers (HISPs), trust communities and accrediting bodies to enable providers to securely exchange patient information across geographic, organizational and vendor boundaries.
The Idaho Health Data Exchange (IHDE) and St. Luke’s Health System (SLHS) announced the launch of Image Exchange viewing capability by eHealthTechnologies.
Image Exchange allows IHDE-authorized physicians, hospitals and clinicians to instantly access, view and collaborate on their patients’ SLHS diagnostic-quality images from the IHDE through a secure, universal web application.
The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Massachusetts eHealth Institute (MeHI) will award $1.5 million in grant monies to EHR, clinical information system (CIS) and other care management system vendors to develop Direct Project-compliant interfaces for the interoperable exchange of health information in the commonwealth.
The MeHI and the state’s Executive Office of Health and Human Services launched the Mass HIway in 2012 to allow secure electronic information exchange between providers and organizations.
“The Meaningful Use program and secure exchange of electronic health records is key to delivering high-quality, cost-effective care,” said Pamela Goldberg, CEO of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. “These grants will support critical connections among providers in a variety of care settings to the HIway.”
Meanwhile, ONC’s Direct Implementation Guidelines for Assuring Security and Interoperability were developed due to ONC's concern that HISPs were not using a "common standard" and were "creating islands of automation." ONC encourages adoption of the guidelines and believes that voluntary adoption will help providers meet Stage 2 of the Meaningful Use program and provide care coordination.
"The new guidelines reflect the results of consensus reached by Direct Project community participants at an open forum we held last November," wrote ONC's Claudia Williams, director of the State Health Information Exchange Program, in a Health IT Buzz blog post. "Alignment with these guidelines will help Direct implementers across the country overcome policy and implementation differences that have limited cross-vendor and cross-community exchange to date."
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Beth Walsh
Clinical Innovation + Technology editor
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.