The Delaware Health Information Network Plays Leadership Role in Advancing the National Health Information Network

Minnesota Health Information Exchange and Compuware Covisint Announce Collaboration

MedPlus® Demonstrates Data Exchange Between Multiple Regional HIEs

 

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The Delaware Health Information Network Plays Leadership Role in Advancing the National Health Information Network

In October 2007, The Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) was one of the nine initial health information exchanges (HIEs) selected to participate in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' National Health Information Network Trial Implementations. Since that time, DHIN and its partner Medicity, Inc. have played an active leadership role in collaborating with other NHIN contract recipients across the nation to help create a working national health information network infrastructure.

As the first fully operational statewide health information exchange, DHIN established itself as a leader in building consensus among healthcare delivery organizations such as hospitals, health systems, and commercial laboratories, and a leader in using innovative technology solutions to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare for all healthcare stakeholders.

The DHIN and FEDCONNECT were the first HIEs to successfully establish a connection in support of the NHIN Trial Implementations and have since established successful connections with other NHIN participants, including, but not limited to, NYCLIX, CareSpark, New Mexico/Lovelace Foundation, West Virginia Health Information Network, and Wright State University.

As a technical requirement for participation in the NHIN Trial Implementations, DHIN and Medicity successfully completed twenty of twenty required NHIN test cases. DHIN and Medicity are now preparing to demonstrate the remaining NHIN Core Services -- Biosurveillance and Laboratory use cases -- in participation with NHIN and the Delaware Division of Public Health.

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Minnesota Health Information Exchange and Compuware Covisint Announce Collaboration

Compuware Corporation announced an agreement between its Covisint subsidiary and a public-private coalition in Minnesota to build one of the largest e-health exchanges in the nation.

The Minnesota Health Information Exchange (MN HIE) provides a secure, electronic health information network designed to increase the safety and quality of care while decreasing costs. Leveraging Covisint technology, MN HIE will enable doctors at any hospital or clinic in the state to have patient-controlled access to medications and other patient-centric information.

"This program allows providers and health plans to collaborate to provide more seamless care for patients," said Mike Ubl, Interim Executive Director of Minnesota Health Information Exchange, LLC. "Immediate benefits for Minnesotans include real-time, point-of-care access to health information and an infrastructure to deliver future services, such as e-prescribing, lab test results, immunization records and communicable disease reporting."

Many patients have electronic medical records, but those records are only available to doctors in a particular hospital or clinic system and not to outside providers. By leveraging a single technology platform to safely and securely exchange health information, providers across Minnesota will have immediate access to vital medical information more quickly to deliver better care.

Sponsor organizations include Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, Fairview Health Services, HealthPartners, Medica, UCare and the Minnesota Department of Human Services. The exchange is intended to go live in November, 2008.

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MedPlus® Demonstrates Data Exchange Between Multiple Regional HIEs

 MedPlus®, the healthcare information technology subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics® Incorporated, announced it has successfully demonstrated HIE-to-HIE (Health Information Exchange) patient data sharing as part of the Nationwide Health Information Network’s (NHIN) Trial Implementations Core Content Testing Event. The August 2008 event represented the largest such demonstration of NHIN capabilities to date. Sponsored by the U.S. government’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, the NHIN seeks to establish a secure, nationwide, interoperable health information infrastructure to connect providers, consumers and others involved in supporting health and healthcare.

MedPlus is currently providing technology and support to one third of the original nine NHIN contractors across three states. The company’s technology serves more hospitals, physicians and patients than any other software provider involved in the initiative.

Data exchange tests were performed between MedPlus’ regional HIE clients and other NHIN Trial Implementation program participants. Preliminary testing successfully demonstrated interoperability between them, proving that one HIE could identify a common patient with another HIE, and then request and receive a patient summary from the second HIE. Once the common patient had been identified, the sending HIE needed to return a continuity of care document (CCD), otherwise known as an HITSP C32 transaction.