Three regional health information exchanges in the past week have started exchanging real-time data on real patients among themselves. According to the participating organizations, this is the nation's first live, multi-region clinical information exchange.
The participants include the Indiana Health Information Exchange in Indianapolis, HealthLINC in Bloomington, Ind., and HealthBridge in Cincinnati. In the first phase, IHIE is sending information to a small number of physician members of HealthLINC and HealthBridge. For instance, some pediatric physicians in Bloomington who referred children to specialists in Indianapolis have electronically received the specialists' test results and reports via the HIEs.
Data exchange among providers hundreds of miles apart generally does not occur frequently, but the medical needs of the patients involved are very high, notes a HealthBridge spokesperson. The organizations expect full interconnectivity, meaning information can flow in both directions among all three HIEs, by mid-September.
IHIE, HealthLINC and HealthBridge collectively serve more than 15,000 physician and 50 hospitals, and have more than 12 million patient records, according to the organizations. More information is available at ihie.org, healthbridge.org and healthlinc.org.
--Joseph Goedert
SEP 2, 2009 4:44pm ET
Disparate HIEs Start to Exchange Data
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A major success factor for accountable care organizations will be linking caregivers across the spectrum of care delivery. If history is any indication, that's going to be an industrywide struggle.
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