Streamlining Interoperability and Ensuring High Performance for Multiple Trusted National Health Information Networks

When long-time Direct Networking provider MedAllies set its sights on becoming one of the first Qualified Health Information Networks™ (QHIN™) under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement^SM (TEFCA^SM), they turned to InterSystems to help.

A major player in the Health Information Service Provider space, MedAllies already served over 5,000 organizations with clinical direct messaging for value-based care and other use cases. But they knew they would need to break down additional interoperability barriers and meet even more demanding scalability and availability requirements to become a QHIN. They chose InterSystems IRIS for Health™ to streamline integration efforts and meet stringent QHIN performance mandates.

Created under the 21st Century Cures Act, TEFCA establishes common principles for data sharing and a common legal foundation for all qualified networks. QHINs undergo a rigorous conformance testing and certification process.

For over 20 years, MedAllies has partnered with healthcare organizations to facilitate the adoption of new technology for improving clinical workflows. The trusted connectivity provider helps ensure the secure transmission of vital health information, promoting high-quality patient care through national networks that enable seamless data sharing and interoperability among healthcare constituents.

Led by clinicians with more than 60 years combined experience in medical practice, MedAllies serves over 800 hospitals, 5,000 ambulatory organizations, 200,000 consumers, 125,000 providers, and dozens of partners, providing millions with the information required for efficient and effective care. The healthcare information network provider sets the standard for integration, message delivery success, document retrieval, patient record location, data usability, and directory accuracy.

MedAllies has leveraged InterSystems solutions to streamline connectivity and ensure high performance and reliability for its Carequality national networks since 2021. “We use InterSystems because they are a leader in healthcare interoperability and their solutions are robust and scalable,” says Gene Curtis, CTO for MedAllies. “They help us meet our aggressive implementation schedules and performance goals.”

InterSystems IRIS for Health helps MedAllies accelerate time-to-market and simplify onboarding by resolving common healthcare system interoperability issues. The solution includes pre-built, customizable data transformations for every major healthcare information standard including HL7® FHIR®.

“Every EHR vendor is a little bit different,” explains Curtis. “With InterSystems we can support a variety of options right out of the box. The flexibility is extremely important. It lets us connect new constituents quickly, easily, and cost-effectively.”

InterSystems IRIS for Health makes it easy for MedAllies to build a framework to extract, normalize, and consolidate healthcare data from disparate systems. “One of the big challenges in a national network is that you’re dealing with lots of different data, from different sources, in different formats,” explains Curtis. “With InterSystems we can retrieve and transform diverse data from different systems on-the-fly to create concise summary documents that comply with the Sequoia Project Data Usability Workgroup implementation guidelines.” The InterSystems solution also underpins MedAllies’ embedded Record Locator Service, which lets providers efficiently search the entire nationwide network in realtime to gather comprehensive patient data.

InterSystems IRIS for Health reliably and securely exchanges data at high scale and speed, helping the network provider meet its stringent performance goals and attain the coveted QHIN designation. MedAllies processes nearly 4 million transactions a day.

“To become a QHIN, you need to demonstrate that you can support at least 1 million transactions a day,” says Curtis. “And we expect transaction rates to ultimately exceed 50 million.”

InterSystems IRIS for Health helps MedAllies simplify interoperability and accelerate time-to-value for several QHIN-related initiatives including a pioneering data-sharing application for EMS responders and a strategic connectivity partnership with a popular ambulatory EHR platform provider.

Beyond Lucid Technologies uses MedAllies as its QHIN partner for its groundbreaking MEDIVIEW BEACON Prehospital Health Information Exchange platform. The collaboration helps emergency medical services personnel more effectively respond to emergencies and more efficiently share data with hospitals. Any EMS professional with a MedAllies network connection can seamlessly access the MEDIVIEW BEACON to obtain key patient data prior to arrival at the patient’s side and to share potentially life-saving information with healthcare facilities prior to handing off a patient. The solution improves outcomes by ensuring responders and hospital staff have advanced access to critical information like a patient’s medical history and demographics, and the cause of an injury.

Healthcare technology vendor Veradigm® selected MedAllies as its QHIN partner for its cloud-based ambulatory EHR platform. Outpatient care facilities, smaller medical practices, and any other healthcare provider with a MedAllies network connection can gain fast, easy, reliable, and secure access to a wide range of patient data, including medical history information and medication lists. The partnership improves point-of-care decision-making, helping close care gaps and boost results.