Commonwell membership grows; alliance hires director

The addition of five new members to the CommonWell Health Alliance increases the group's representation to 70 percent of the acute care EHR market and 20 percent of the ambulatory EHR market.

MEDITECH, Merge and Kareo join as contributing members while PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) join as general members.

“We know it takes collective experience and dedication to break down barriers to nationwide data exchange, so we are especially pleased to welcome these industry innovators to the CommonWell family,” said Nick Knowlton, vice president of business development at Brightree and CommonWell Membership Committee Chair. “Each organization will contribute to our effort by providing a commitment to action and new perspectives for additional use cases that will help us accelerate our current deployment of real-world interoperability services.”

• MEDITECH is one of CommonWell’s largest members to join since inception. It provides fully integrated technology solutions for hospitals, ambulatory care centers, physicians’ offices, long term care and behavioral health facilities, and home care organizations.

• Merge is a leading provider of enterprise imaging, interoperability and clinical systems that seek to advance healthcare. It offers solutions in radiology, eye care, cardiology, orthopedics and clinical trials—all of which provide the opportunity for CommonWell to develop new use cases across a broader spectrum of the health care continuum. Additionally, Merge has the most complete radiology solution on the market, from small-volume sites up to the largest practices and chains in the country.

• Kareo brings over 30,000 providers and 60,000 users of its cloud-based medical office software suite into CommonWell. As CommonWell continues to deploy services nationwide, Kareo’s ambulatory experience and reach will accelerate universal provider access to critical healthcare data.

• PointClickCare’s cloud-based software platform helps more than 10,000 senior living and skilled nursing communities to achieve results that matter – enriching the lives of their residents for better outcomes, improving financial and operational health and mitigating risk. The company’s person-centered approach to managing senior care ensures providers can collaborate securely, across care settings with confidence.

• Surgical Information Systems (SIS) joins as CommonWell’s first vendor solely focused on providing solutions specific to the perioperative process. As CommonWell prepares to develop new use cases, SIS’ expertise and knowledge of the complex surgical environment will serve to enhance CommonWell’s ability to offer real-world interoperability services that are functional for specialty care settings.

To date, CommonWell’s services—patient identification, record location, patient privacy and consent, and trusted data access—are live in six states including North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois. More than 20 provider locations are using the services, and more than 26,000 persons have consented to enroll on CommonWell’s network.

After conducting a national search, the Alliance has hired its first executive director, Jitin Asnaani. Asnaani has worked in product innovation and interoperability at athenahealth, technical standards development at the Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT, produce management at a health IT startup and strategy consulting at Deloitte. Most recently, he created athenahealth’s Technology Standards and Policy (TSP) program, which drives and advocates for increased HIT interoperability and real-world interoperation. He led corporate involvement in strategic interoperability initiatives, including federal advisory committees, CommonWell Health Alliance, the Argonaut Project and DirectTrust.org.

“Jitin has been instrumental in the CommonWell Health Alliance since its founding,” said Rod O’Reilly, president of McKesson Health Solutions. “In addition, his leadership on both the national HIT standards and policy committees, his strategic mindset, and his ability to execute while collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders makes him the perfect executive director for the Alliance at this critical juncture.”

“I’m honored to work with members whose commitment to ‘interoperability in action’ has already produced working real-world services that are being deployed throughout the country.” said Jitin Asnaani, who has been active in the Alliance since its inception at HIMSS 2013. “My priority is to keep that momentum going so that interoperability can contribute to improved delivery and outcomes, sooner rather than later.”