Health Information Exchange (HIE)

The Health IT Privacy and Security Tiger team laid out its agenda July 6 for addressing some of the more urgent health information privacy policy gaps confronting federal policymakers before the meaningful use plan goes into effect next year.

VHA Inc., a healthcare network that serves more than 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals and 28,000 non-acute care providers nationwide, has contracted with athenahealth to offer its physician practices access to the company's full suite of Web-based electronic health record, practice management, and patient communication services.

A new KLAS report, which examines the health information exchange purchase plans of nearly 100 healthcare organizations, has found that, despite a crowded market, very few companies so far have consistently earned the confidence of providers.

Just one year after its launch, officials at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report that 57 percent of patients and 40 percent of referring community physicians are using its Web-based portal for personal health information.

The Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL) has received $2 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide technical assistance to advance electronic exchange of laboratory data.

IBM and the University of Missouri (MU) announced an initiative on Friday that aims to develop a first-of-a-kind cloud computing environment for genomics research collaboration at a regional level.

With the federal programs in place under the HITECH Act, hospitals feel pressured and rushed to purchase an HIE platform, according to Ed Duryee, CIO of Elyria, Ohio-based EMH Regional Healthcare System. "We're in the throes of deciding how to get into the HIE game," he said.

The Veterans Affairs and Defense departments are working on consent management tools that would let patients control access to their personal health information - including medication lists, lab test results and diagnoses - during health information exchanges between the two agencies.

A recent in-depth assessment of health information exchange (HIE) vendors from IDC Health Insights is predicting "significant growth over the next 12 months or so," according to Lynne Dunbrack, program director at IDC Health Insights.

"Any time a business decision is client-driven, it's much more likely to be successful," says Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman.