NHIN Exchange: 'Beyond the science fair level'

Mary Stevens, editor, CMIO magazine

The Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) Exchange isn’t a futuristic proof of concept, like a model hydrogen-powered hovercraft at a high school science fair. This was the message of a National eHealth Collaborative webinar, “Revisiting the NHIN Value Proposition,” earlier this week that featured speakers from Kaiser Permanente, MedVirginia and the Social Security Administration.

Speakers outlined progress and a glimpse of the value generated by live HIE via the NHIN Exchange architecture.

As Michael Mathews, chair of the NHIN Exchange Coordinating Committee and CEO of MedVirginia summed it up: “It’s not enough to just connect the wires and get the clinical transactions flowing across our health IT platform. We feel that if this does not result in engagement of physicians to utilize this information, and if we are not able to use the information to enhance care coordination, continuity of care and enhanced clinical decision making, then we really haven’t done anything more than a gigantic lab experiment. … But [we] have moved well beyond the science fair level and are able to create ongoing, sustainable value.”

“You really can’t do effective mobile population care … if you have incomplete sets of information, or you’ll be advising people to do things that they’ve already done and they’ll be A) irritated, B) discouraged that you don’t know them, or C) potentially having something done unnecessarily and redundantly in the interest of improving the health of the population," said John Mattison, CMIO of Kaiser Permanente. “HIE is really a sine qua non for any geographic region, especially for frequent flyers [who are] often the most migratory and most subject to having incomplete records,” he said.

The challenges moving forward are familiar to many organizations and most quality improvement efforts: The cycle of getting buy-in and expanding use to build more value while differentiating the effort from what others are doing. 

The trust framework built into the NHIN architecture via the DURSA (Data Ue and Reciprocal Support Agreement) is a critical component of the framework's success, the speakers said. However, trust isn't the only onstacle.  “Part of our challenge is continuing to support innovation and testing new uses and bring value to more participants, [when] at the same time … we all have businesses that we have to run successfully," Mathews said. "At the same time, we recognize that what our world’s going to look like five years from now is vastly different from what we’re doing today.”

To see the NHIN presentation materials, click here. To tell me NHIN is closer to that hovercraft model than to effective HIE, contact me at mstevens@trimedmedia.com.

 
Mary Stevens, editor