The US National Health Information Network is Coming Together.

The following very interesting report arrived a few days ago.

NHIN goes live for a day, sort of

By Nancy Ferris

Published on September 23, 2008

The emerging Nationwide Health Information Network was put through its paces today as live operations were demonstrated before a large audience at the Health and Human Services Department and via a Webcast.

The demonstration involved records created for the test but stored in actual health systems. The exercise showed that a health care provider could easily use a Web browser to obtain basic records on a patient stored by another health care system.

“I think you have to admit that this is really cool,” said one of the participants, Dr. Robert White of the New Mexico Health Information Collaborative. “This is kind of like having a magic decoder ring in health care.”

Holt Anderson, executive director of the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, quipped that the problem was that it looked too easy. Thousands of hours of work and ingenuity — a fair amount supplied by volunteers — have gone into the NHIN program and lie behind the seeming ease of retrieving records.

Using a variety of Web interfaces and authentication schemes, representatives of more than a dozen health care organizations showed how they could locate a record, retrieve it, and view important information such as the patient’s medications, diagnoses, allergies, laboratory test results and recent treatments.

…..

In mid-December, another public NHIN demonstration will feature more complex scenarios and more varied data.

Full article here:

http://www.govhealthit.com/online/news/350589-1.html?GHITNL=yes

At the same time we had the following press release.

Compuware's Covisint To Build E-Health Exchange For Minnesota

Compuware Corp. (NASDAQ: CPWR) Monday 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 -- being called MN HIE, which is being pronounced "Min High" -- provides a secure, electronic health information network designed to increase the safety and quality of care while decreasing costs.

Through 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 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 using 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.

“MN HIE is an important part of the state’s health care reform efforts,” said Minnesota Human Services Commissioner Cal Ludeman. “It will enhance patient safety, as well as quality improvement. MN HIE will also allow providers to more effectively manage and coordinate healthcare services with each other.”

Brett Furst, Covisint vice president for health care, said Minnesota is the second statewide health information exchange deal for the company. Tennessee made the first such announcement in February.

Said Furst: "We'll provide an infrastructure for securely shared health information between health plans, the largest health systems and the state, with 90 percent of the citizens, four and a half million people, on Day one."

Medication history will be the first information exchanged in November, which Furst called "a key data element for patient safety and reducing the cost of care." He said the system "will be adding more clinical and administrative transactions through the middle of next year, including laboratory information, imaging and eligibility."

Furst said Covisint will use its technology to make sure the data stays private and only available to authorized users.

He also said Covisint is in talks with several other states, including Michigan, for similiar systems.

Covisint is compensated for its work in the deal by a subscription fee paid by the system's users.

Covisint was founded in 2000 by a group of automakers seeking to bring the power of the Internet to the automotive supply chain. It later sold its business-to-business auction operations, but kept the secure communications business. The company now has 280 employees, up from 220 a year ago, and Furst said it currently has openings for developers, support staff, project managers and sales staff.

Full release here.

http://www.wwj.com/Compuware-s-Covisint-To-Build-E-Health-Exchange-Fo/2928117

Anyone who is not sure that the US is making serious progress in Health Information Exchange needs to read carefully. It is slowly, but inexorably coming together, while we have NEHTA wanting to build central repositories. Let’s get the information flows happening first! Then we can see if we really need all this IEHR stuff.

David.