The September HIT Council meeting

Yesterday, the Massachusetts HIT Council met to review progress on the state HIE.   Here is the presentation we used.

Important highlights include:
*41 organizations are now connected to the state HIE
*We've done nearly 1.5 million transactions
*We've decided how to create a trust fabric with other Health Information Service Providers (HISPs).   We will support authentication by exchanging trust anchors and signing HISP to HISP agreements. We will support authorization through the use of a white list that includes those organizations which have signed our Massachusetts participation agreement
*In late October/early November we will demonstrate Phase 2 of our HIE functionality - a statewide master patient index and consent registry which supports "pull" transactions such as patients arriving at Emergency Departments, enabling us to gather medical information from multiple institutions.

To me, we're near the tipping point of interoperability.   The standards, the ACO imperative to share data, and the motivation of meaningful use Stage 2 have created the perfect storm for providers, payers, and patients to share data.