The New York eHealth Collaborative, the statewide public-private partnership that has developed a health information exchange (HIE) roadmap with support from the New York Department of Health, said that it plans to spend $129 million in state and federal funds to build its network, according to an announcement Oct. 26.
Given the number of medical facilities in the state, that will likely make its HIE the largest electronic medical records network in the country, according to David Whitlinger, the executive director of the collaborative. While other states and the Veterans Affairs Department operate large networks for medical records, "New York's system will ultimately dwarf them when completed, given the scope of the state's medical facilities," he said.
Like many statewide HIEs around the country, New York will launch with core services in mid-2011 and add more services every several months until 2014, according to its plan submitted to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
The Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY) " the formal name of the HIE -- would enable patients and providers to have immediate access to histories, prescriptions, test results and medical analysis and diagnoses anywhere in the state at any time, according to its plan.
The proposed statewide network will link together several existing regional networks with new technical infrastructure and programming. State agencies will set policies to govern the system's establishment and maintenance. Currently, healthcare providers can share some electronic records with certain neighboring medical institutions.
Elsewhere, Wisconsin officials have designated the Wisconsin State Health Information Network (WISHIN) as the state's HIE governing organization, which will set up initial features of a statewide HIE in 2011, including the services for healthcare providers to share patient clinical summaries and the results of lab tests.
WISHIN is a non-profit organization formed by the Wisconsin Hospital Association, the Wisconsin Health Information Organization, the Wisconsin Collaborative for Health Care Quality and the Wisconsin Medical Society. The Wisconsin Relay of Electronic Data (WIRED) for Health Board, the state's planning board appointed by the governor, endorsed WISHIN, according to an announcement Oct. 26.
Wisconsin is receiving a total of $9.4 million from ONC for the development and implementation of the exchange.
In Massachusetts, the statewide HIE is working to set up a "network of networks" incorporating existing integrated delivery systems, community HIEs and other networks to be deployed in early 2011, according to Dr. Richard Shoup, director of the Massachusetts eHealth Institute, the statewide HIE.
Currently, various networks in the state support e-prescribing, administrative transactions and hospital summaries. With about 45 percent EHR adoption, Massachusetts already has a rich technical infrastructure, according to Shoup, who said he anticipates the state HIE will be a "federated structure, with some centralized services."
Shoup discussed the state's HIE plans during an Oct. 21 online presentation sponsored by HIMSS.
In early 2011, the state HIE will automate care coordination by enabling providers to share clinical summaries through standard formats and automate reporting of immunizations to a registry.
The institute is also involved with the New England States Consortium Systems Organization, a non-profit organization of the six New England Health and Human Services agencies and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, to develop rules for using the provider directories within each state, Shoup said.
"It's an opportunity to promote HIE integration with Medicaid and the evolving MITA infrastructure and architecture requirements," he said. The Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) is a technology and business roadmap for Medicaid system modernization.
