Perspective: Healthcare IT partnerships bring value to HIEs

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[url=]Perspective: Healthcare IT partnerships bring value to HIEs[/url]

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Source: Patty Enrado, NHINWatch.com

Date: June 16, 2009

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Initiate Systems and Axolotl’s new partnership will offer a solution integrating their data management and health information exchange (HIEs) capabilities, respectively, to enable interoperability among healthcare information systems.


Health information exchanges are becoming more sophisticated in their ability and scope to move data among disparate healthcare information systems, said Anand Shroff, senior director of product management for Axolotl. HIEs and regional health information organizations (RHIOs) are now connecting to personal health records, feeding data into state and national registries and moving data from electronic health records into the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) prototypes, he said.


Axolotl has been meeting its customers’ needs with its Elysium product suite, a self-contained system, Shroff said. Although Axolotl’s suite includes a Community Patient Index (CPI), one of its customers requested an enterprise-level Master Patient Index (MPI) solution to derive more value from its current systems. Axolotl responded by partnering with Initiate Systems, the market leader in MPI, Shroff said.


Some HIEs and regional health information organizations (RHIOs) are looking for additional components to quantify the value of their enterprise networks, he said. The ability to manage identities and core patient information in a consolidated place is going to be a market requirement in the near term, Shroff said. It will require a patient data hub to be shared across vendors. “It’s logical,” he said. “It will quickly become a trend.”


Axolotl will still support and enhance its CPI, but the partnership and its integrated solution will create opportunity and value from a market perspective. Shroff expects the likes of Oracle and IBM to offer data management solutions in the marketplace, which will lower the cost of the technology and as a result make it more economical for stakeholders to work with cutting-edge systems and build HIEs, Shroff said.


Serving the healthcare ecosystem by providing the critical infrastructure for data linking is one of Initiate Systems’ business objectives, said Lorraine Fernandes, vice president and healthcare industry ambassador at Initiate Systems. By managing patient and provider identification data and relationship data, Fernandes said, “We’re solving that much broader need.”


Initiate Systems is serving the healthcare ecosystem and growing the company through partnerships with a number of companies, including dbMotion and Allscripts, she said.


The partnership between Axolotl and Initiate Systems already has joint clients in the pipeline and reaction to the collaboration has been favorable, she said. “We’re ready to connect to states and tap into the NHIN,” she said. When ONC clearly defines the term “meaningful use,” which will determine funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Fernandes said, “We’ll be ready to work with states and regions as they apply for stimulus money that will become available at the end of summer.”