How Far Has Health Information Exchange Progressed (Or Has It)?

The Indiana Health Information Exchange has what is most probably the longest track record in H.I.E. If time is of the essence for a product or service to mature, the IHIE certainly fills this space.

Well before the advent of ONCHIT, HITECH, and a garden full of eponyms, acronyms, and glossaries of several pages in length, the Reigenstreff Institute in Indiana provided a nidus of expertise for a brave new world.

The Indiana Health Information Exchange has what is most probably the longest track record in H.I.E. If time is of the essence for a product or service to mature, the IHIE certainly fills this space.

IHIE connects more than 25,000 healthcare providers in 17 states delivering services that make patient information available when and where it is needed.

IHIE began unceremoniously in the day when no one knew the term HIE. It began and is still a private for profit organization born well before government deemed it necessary to stimulate HIXs with short lived goals and non sustainable business models. (This sounds much like the Affordable Care Act). The dirty word here according to HHS is “for profit’. For profits need not apply for HHS grants. And most will be doomed to fail without strong leadership and vision.

Already the first generation of successful health information exchanges are into HIX 2.0. 2.0 will leverage HIX capacity and interoperability to include the Accountable Care Organizations which include multi-disparate medical clinics/offices and hospitals. The diagnostic and treatment outcome paradigms will be measured cross platform transforming data into big data and to feed the giant analytic algorithm.

The task of administering an ACO is formidable, traversing differing specialties, hospitals and physical space.

The Health Information Exchange will likely morph into serving another infrastructure for Affordable Care.

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