NASHVILLE, TN – March 19, 2013 – ICA, a leading provider of interoperability technology that enables care coordination and health information exchange (HIE), today announced that Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) and Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN) have successfully validated national interoperability by facilitating the secure exchange of patient records between each organization via Direct messaging. Direct messaging, the new federal healthcare email system, was facilitated by the AlliedHIE Company and ICA, using ICA’s CareAlign Direct Messaging and Exchange solutions.
The Direct Project provides HIPAA-compliant national infrastructure and interoperability through certified HISPs enabling healthcare professionals and providers to affordably and securely send clinical messages, hospital discharge summaries, radiology reports, lab results, immunization reports, CCDs and a wide variety of important, timely and critical patient information to instantly improve patient care and safety. Some of the nation’s largest and wisest healthcare organizations are using Direct messaging because it’s fast, secure, smart, affordable and HIPAA-compliant. Instead of months or years, new users are authenticated, on-boarded and trained to use Direct messaging in less than 24 hours.
“We are very pleased to validate national interoperability with KHIN and the Kansas medical community through Direct messaging. Our two dynamic states have business leaders, families, students and vacationers visiting each state and now we can quickly, confidently and securely exchange medical information when medical need warrants the same,” said Dr. Jan Lee, executive director of DHIN. “With our core HIE transactions approaching one million a month, Delaware remains committed to helping advance national interoperability and the Direct Project. It’s an important next step.”
“What is exciting about this connection is that patients no longer have to be concerned that their important medical records may not be available when they travel across the country,” said Laura McCrary, executive director of KHIN. “By electronically sharing secure messages between KHIN and DHIN, we have established the foundation for a new standard in patient care where critical health information is available electronically wherever our patients seek care. This is particularly important in our global society and for Kansans who travel extensively throughout our nation. KHIN is already connected to our surrounding states and is sharing health information across 30 Kansas health care systems with more than 3,000 medical professionals on our Direct messaging platform.”
“While many states and organizations are just getting started on the journey to HIE, health IT and Direct messaging, both Delaware and Kansas are already live with actively robust HIE systems,” said Kelly Lewis, president of AlliedHIE. “DHIN and KHIN are national leaders delivering information and use cases that immediately increase patient safety. Allied Direct is pleased to help facilitate affordable encrypted, mobile-ready, HIPAA-compliant email through our live HISP infrastructure services with the federal healthcare email system.”
“We are pleased to see our customers, DHIN, KHIN and AlliedHIE, successfully facilitate the secure exchange of patient information with each other via Direct messaging,” said Gary Zegiestowsky, President and CEO of ICA. “As a market leader in health information exchange and interoperability, we consider this a valuable opportunity to help grow the Direct Project and the many use cases that add immediate value, safety and cost-savings.”
The Direct Project, the new federal healthcare email system, and HISP infrastructure services are still in their infancy, like ISPs and email in 1991-1992. After 1992, Internet and email usage exponentially exploded through services like LinkedIn, Quicken, Facebook, You Tube and Google. Today, Direct messaging through HISPs provides an easy-to-use, affordable, HIPAA-compliant infrastructure that supports electronic exchange of health information among healthcare providers, regardless of their size, resources or technical capacity.
DHIN, The Delaware Health Information Network, is the first live, statewide health information network in the nation. Launched in 2007, today it serves all of Delaware’s acute care hospitals and 97% of the State’s medical providers. More than 9,000,000 clinical results and reports are posted on DHIN each year. Total patient records in the system now exceed 1.4 million including patients from all 50 states. For more information about DHIN visit www.DHIN.org or call 302-678-0220.
KHIN, The Kansas Health Information Network, serves almost 250,000 patients through connections with more than 30 hospitals and clinics. The KHIN mission is to improve health care quality, coordination and efficiency through the exchange of health information at the point of care utilizing a secure electronic network provided by a collaboration of health care organizations. KHIN is the first HIE to connect and feed data to the national disease outbreak surveillance system, according to CDC officials. Officials at BioSense, the CDC's syndromic surveillance system, said that KHIN became the first HIE to begin contributing data (www.khinonline.org).
The AlliedHIE Company is a patient-centric, purpose-driven, point-of-care focused national health information exchange company with a mission to include and serve allied health organizations in order to connect our most vulnerable and at-risk patients. To lead America’s Health Information Exchange we are partnering with the nation’s premier Health IT firms, including ICA, www.icainformatics.com to deliver best in class Health IT services, critical security and aggregation services, and superior client support. Allied-Direct’s national commercial strategy to be the market-leading, best-in-class, HIPAA-compliant and fastest-growing Direct Email and HISP in the Federal Healthcare Email System (www.alliedhie.com).
