With interoperability on the lips of most healthcare executives at the HIMSS15 Annual Conference & Exhibition in Chicago, many companies came with offerings that work around the basic connections between EHR systems with software that operates on top of the EHR system.
Programs such as Fluence Health, developed by UPMC Enterprises — a division of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center health system that invests in innovative technologies — pulls information from EHRs and present it in a usable format in a separate system. It does not store the information and is not integrated into the EHR, but it draws information from multiple programs and presents it in a more usable format to viewers. It is currently being piloted in several UPMC hospitals, and the organization is considering offering it to other health systems, according to Edward McCallister, CIO of UPMC.
Other companies, such as Imprivata, presented secure text messaging and email systems through which providers can share patient documents and information without directly interfacing into each other's EHRs. Jake Hughes, a senior sales engineer at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Citrix, said many providers in small practices don't have the infrastructure in place to meet many meaningful use requirements, let alone purchase an EHR that interfaces with others. These small providers develop workarounds such as using email and fax to send documents back and forth, which is not secure.
"Email has become one of the top ways to get around IT, and get around security compliance in healthcare," Mr. Hughes said. "As soon as the [data] goes out through email, we lose the core components of HIPAA compliance and security in the environment."
Joseph Frassica, MD, the CMIO, CTO and vice president at Andover, Mass.-based Philips Healthcare, said although interoperability was a buzzword this year at HIMSS, it has been a steady effort for the last decade or so in the industry. Philips has slowly been sorting through the best ways to address it, but it is moving faster because of the new standards on data exchange, he said.
Dr. Frassica, who spoke at the Interoperability Showcase at the event, said one project that Philips worked on involved developing another cloud-based decision support system that networked several sites in separate states. He said the project is still in progress, but that the project was on track to make the data available more easily and reduce costs over time.
"One of the biggest challenges in healthcare is for every great idea that we have, all those companies need to have access to data that's kept by a few vendors in the health IT ecosystem in the U.S. and a few more around the globe," Dr. Frassica said. "We're very hopeful that we're about to walk into the next era of healthcare informatics where you have open application program interfaces and information is readily available."