Geisinger Launches Open Source EHR Application Interface
The Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health System announced this week that it has successfully connected its Epic electronic health record (EHR)-developed Rheumatology app, using international draft standards, to the Cerner Corporation EHR framework.
Connecting this app to another system’s framework, Geisinger says, in the future will help all EHRs that wish to leverage Geisinger-developed apps do the same. This open-source approach could give providers access to the information that resides outside and/or inside the EHR, as well as decision support, regardless of the underlying EHR platform. Geisinger did this work through through xG Health Solutions, a company it founded in 2013 to commercialize innovation.
“Over the past 18 years, Geisinger has programmed a broad spectrum of work flow facilitation and clinical decision support into our electronic health record and into software applications that operate outside of our EHR, but communicate with it,” Geisinger Health System President and Chief Executive Officer Glenn Steele, Jr., M.D, said in a statement. “Until now, Geisinger EHR-related innovations that improve quality, increase efficiency and reduce the cost of care have not been available to other healthcare delivery systems. This pilot program shows there is now a way to do that. ”
Geisinger and xG Health Solutions used a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator’s Strategic Healthcare IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARPn). Specifically, it facilitated use of the Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technologies (SMArt) Platform, a web-based interoperable container and the corresponding HL-7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) interface.
