Health Information Exchange

Questions: 1. Discuss the impetus for health information exchange (HIE) in the United States 2. Describe basic HIE organizational structures, architectures, and services3. Reinforce the need for data stewardship in HIE services 4. Identify the state, regional, and local activities in achieving benefits and overcoming challenges for HIE organizations 5. Describe the federal government's concept of a nationwide health information network? Answers: 1. Health information exchange is the movement or mobilization of healthcare information electronically across different organizations that are within a community, hospital or regions and HIE also refers to that particular organization which facilitates this exchange. It also provides the capability to move the clinical information electronically among all the systems of care information along with the maintenance of this information that is being exchanged (Acker B et al (2007). The main aim of HIE is to facilitate the access and retrieval of the clinical data so as to provide a more timely, effective, efficient and safer patient care. 2. The centralized HIEs have a single clinical data repository that is usually maintained by the authorities of the HIE that are governed by the representatives of each of the member in the hospital. Thus the centralized architecture can be utilized on a regional basis for instance by hospital systems located in the same area (Adler-Milstein J et al (2009). The most interoperable HIE architecture is the centralized model costs that are mostly used to set up and maintain because it requires a large upfront investment in technology in the form of servers and which need to be monitored and stored in a secure and separate location. 3. There is a nationwide effort among the healthcare and information technology industries, relevant government agencies, employers, and consumers to establish or identify and authorize a national health data stewardship entity. This would ensure that rules for standards are established for uniform and data that health information technology (HIT) would enable the exchange of health information. This NHDSE would coordinate the bodies that support the life cycle and collection of data exchanged over electronic and other health information exchange (HIE) systems and the data is stored in a variety of registers (Burrington-Brown et al (2007). 4. Many recent federal policies support the adoption of HIE in order to improve healthcare by addressing the personal health information and also to concert the efforts for facilitating HIE that has existed for over two decades. Their experiences also include the challenges and barriers that are faced in association with the technology and without the new strategies the methods of HIE cannot address these barriers. 5. The nationwide health information network is defined as the set of standards, services, and policies that enable secure health information exchange over the Internet.This request for information is being issued to request public to draft proposals to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology considering the anticipation of developing a notice and to establish a governance mechanism and also helps in the creation of a voluntary program under which entities that facilitate electronic health information exchange could be validated (Hripcsak G et al (2007). References Acker B, Birnbaum CL, Branden JH, et al.HIM principles in health information exchange.J AHIMA2007 Adler-Milstein J, Bates DW, Jha AK.U.S. Regional health information organizations: progress and challenges.Health Aff2009 Burrington-Brown, Jill; Hjort, Beth; Washington, Lydia. "Health Data Access, Use, and Control."Journal of AHIMA78, no.5 (May 2007) Hripcsak G, Kaushal R, Johnson KB, et al.The United Hospital fund meeting on evaluating health information exchange.J Biomed Inform2007