The eHealth Exchange, the oldest and largest nationwide health information network connecting the public and private sectors, has officially launched its new gateway technology that aims to simplify connectivity for its participants via a single connection to the nation.
Partnering with the Veterans Health Information Exchange, the Florida-based AdventHealth, the Oregon Community Health Information Network (OCHIN) and InterCommunity CCO, also in Oregon, the stakeholders, jointly, have committed to “query-based connectivity to improve patient care,” said Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange. “[And that] drove us from implementation kick-off to live, bi-directional exchange using the new eHealth Exchange technology in just four months. This is a remarkable achievement for any health technology initiative, and unheard of when you think of implementing visions to support nationwide scale,” he added.
With more than 75 percent of all hospitals in America and 61 regional and state health information exchanges (HIEs) participating in the nationwide eHealth Exchange, officials believe that the evolution from point-to-point connections to a one-gateway solution “will dramatically increase connectivity for the entire country while saving millions of dollars in IT infrastructure and effort for network participants and their future exchange partners.”
The benefits to members will include reduced information sharing expense, further expansion of its national footprint, and faster implementation of innovative capabilities such as real-time content quality validation and a national record locator service, according to officials.
When the eHealth Exchange was formed more than a decade ago by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC), the government opted for a federated exchange approach, stopping short of creating a required gateway. As the proposed national network for health information exchange, the government favored an open-market and decentralized approach that would support further innovation, much like the internet.
Today, the landscape has changed, officials of the eHealth Exchange noted. Though the eHealth Exchange remains the largest network of its kind, there are multiple other health information networks across the U.S. “The eHealth Exchange can now adopt a more centralized health information network approach by providing a common gateway for all participants. This is also a step toward supporting additional exchange methods beyond query and a breadth of new use cases,” officials said.
The eHealth Exchange leverages technology from health IT solutions company InterSystems, integrated with the eHealth Exchange’s Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) healthcare directory as the basis for the hub model. The hub will look to make it easier for organizations to connect to each other using a “connect once” model to reach any other member of the network. “This approach leads to faster access to correct patient records at a lower implementation cost,” officials contend.
The eHealth Exchange network’s updated approach will also help organizations to prepare for pending regulatory changes, such as information blocking and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) interoperability rule, as well as meeting expectations in the ONC’s pending Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA), officials noted.
“This eHealth Exchange architecture will help decrease complexity, cost, and security risk of our connections to our community partners,” said Jonathan Nebeker, M.D., acting CMIO at the Department of Veterans Affairs. “It improves appropriate access to Veteran’s health data and will help VA and community providers provide better care."
