The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded contracts totaling $22.5 million to nine health information exchanges (HIEs) to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).
The contracts aim to foster the development of basic health information exchange between select HIEs, upon which more complex functions will be possible over time, HHS stated.
Awardees include the following organizations, representing state and regional HIEs:
· CareSpark — Tri-cities region of Eastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia
· Delaware Health Information Network — Delaware
· Indiana University — Indianapolis Metroplex
· Long Beach Network for Health — Long Beach and Los Angeles, Calif.
· Lovelace Clinic Foundation — New Mexico
· MedVirginia — Central Virginia
· New York eHealth Collaborative — New York
· North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance Inc. — North Carolina
· West Virginia Health Information Network — West Virginia
These contractors will participate in the NHIN Cooperative — a collaborative to test and demonstrate the exchange of private and secure health information.
Interim NHIN results will be shared through three public forums and other public demonstrations of real-time information exchange at the end of the first contract year (September 2008). Once created, the NHIN health information exchanges' specifications and related testing materials will be placed in the public domain.
