Health Information Exchange (HIE)

Will a health system battered by the pandemic emerge stronger in the year ahead? The annual report predicts challenges such as profitably merging virtual and in-person care, capitalizing on new consumer- and clinician-facing digital health tools – and enabling pharma to find its footing in this changing ecosystem.

A panel of experts shared international outlooks on recent interoperability developments and initiatives at the HIMSS & Health 2.0 Middle East Digital event.  

The new proposed rule would "break down barriers that have stood in the way of commonsense care coordination and value-based arrangements for far too long," says HHS Secretary Alex Azar.

Its Healthcare Interoperability Readiness Program aims to help healthcare organizations understand and prep for the new rules, assess their own interoperability maturity and build new API-based exchange capabilities. 

The FHIR R4 APIs in version 2020.2 of the platform will enable broader access to provider, payer and pharmacy benefits data – and can help boost compliance with upcoming interoperability and patient access rules, the company says.

Two groups applied the Framework for Cross-Organizational Patient Identity Management, first developed with Intermountain in 2016, to payers – and found a high matching accuracy rate across 36 different organizations.

The integration of PainChek results into the Medi-map platform will further enhance the seamless delivery of care.

The document describes the government's hopes for how technology goals should be prioritized over the next five years – with an emphasis on patients' access to their health data.

The updated interim final rule, meant to offer providers and developers more flexibility as they respond to COVID-19, also pushes out health IT certification requirements.

Seamless shared health information can support patient transitions, from hospital discharge to outpatient follow-up care, signaling yet another potential advantage of telemedicine.