Health Information Exchange Strategic Planning Guide

Make Your HIE Vision a Reality

Doctors looking at MRI images on computer screens

Specifying Requirements, Evaluating Technologies, and Selecting Partners

Making Your HIE Vision a Reality

Health information exchanges (HIEs), also known as Shared Care Records, regional health exchanges, or health data utilities, improve the quality, speed, and economics of healthcare by allowing healthcare providers, patients, health insurers (payers), and others to easily and securely share electronic health data across disparate systems.

HIEs can help an extended community improve care coordination and continuity, reduce errors and inefficiencies, and improve diagnoses, treatments, and patient outcomes. But implementing an HIE—reliably and seamlessly exchanging vast amounts of diverse data across dissimilar systems at scale—is no easy matter. Interoperability barriers and performance constraints can impair HIE initiatives, hinder adoption, and lead to unforeseen project delays and cost overruns.

Choosing the right technology platform and the right technology partner can make all the difference. This guide provides recommendations for defining, planning, and executing an HIE initiative. It can help you specify functional requirements, evaluate technology providers, avoid surprises, and optimize results.

Defining Potential Services

HIEs provide a wide array of healthcare data delivery, retrieval, and discovery services for providers, patients, health insurers, and public health agencies. When planning an HIE, start by developing a prioritized list of the services you intend to support (or may potentially support) over time. Table 1 lists common HIE services and their functions advantage in the marketplace.

Partner with InterSystems for Success

InterSystems is a global leader in healthcare data technology and standards-based interoperability. We have the products, experience, and expertise to help you overcome the most complex healthcare data integration and interoperability challenges—quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively. We support a wide range of global and national healthcare information protocols and standards, and continuously evolve our products to keep pace with change.

Many of the largest and most successful HIEs in the world rely on InterSystems solutions and expertise, including:

Healthix

Healthix, the largest public HIE in the US, uses InterSystems solutions to gather and maintain a unified health record for more than 21 million individuals, to share data with more than 2000 healthcare organizations, to connect more than 9,000 sites, and to send more than 7 million clinical event alerts per year. InterSystems technology lets Healthix maintain all patient data in a single, consistent format, regardless of source.

Manifest MedEx

Manifest MedEx, the biggest nonprofit health data network in California, employs InterSystems technology as the foundation for its statewide HIE. The massive network serves 38 million Californians and 17 health plans - over 90% of the population - connecting more than 140 hospitals, 3,000 healthcare organizations, and 38 million Californians. Delivered as a remotely hosted and managed service, the InterSystems offering ensures high availability and scalability for the HIE, while freeing up Manifest MedEx technical resources to focus on innovation instead of underlying technology.

NABIDH

NABIDH, the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) secure platform for healthcare data exchange between public and private entities, relies on InterSystems technology to provide access to integrated care for more than three million citizens in the United Arab Emirate of Dubai. With more than 14 million unified medical records, NABIDH connects over 65 thousand clinicians and 73 connected electronic medical records across nearly two thousand facilities. NABIDH is also coordinating with Riayati, another InterSystems powered health data platform in UAE, to deliver an evidence-based gold standard for public health, well-being initiatives, and disease surveillance.

Hixny

Hixny, a leading public HIE serving more than 5 million individuals and 6,900 clinical users in 28 eastern counties north of New York City leveraged InterSystems solutions to develop a SMART on FHIR application to streamline clinical workflows for social service referrals. The innovative application displays a patient’s social and medical history side-by-side whenever a clinician views a patient record. The app saves time and improves care quality by allowing clinicians to assess social determinants of health and make referrals directly from their familiar clinical applications and workflows.

State of North Carolina

The State of North Carolina uses InterSystems technology to streamline interoperability for its designated statewide HIE. NC HealthConnex improves care quality and patient safety, facilitates better care transitions, and reduces overall healthcare costs by making pertinent medical data for more than 12 million patients available to more than 7000 healthcare facilities across the state. The HIE gives authorized providers near real-time access to treatment summaries, medication lists, lab results, diagnoses, and other critical patient information, helping them make timelier and better-informed decisions.

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To learn how InterSystems can help make your HIE vision a reality, contact us today.