eHealth Exchange HIE Reaches 1.35 Billion Health Data Requests Per Month

The eHealth Exchange, a health information exchange (HIE) connecting federal agencies and healthcare providers, has announced that the eHealth Exchange Hub platform has surpassed 1.35 billion inbound health data requests per month.

eHealth Exchange built the Exchange Hub using a cloud-based infrastructure that could facilitate the program’s rapid, exponential growth. Originally, the hub was intended to support no more than a million daily transactions. Now, the HIE processes about 33 million information requests daily.

“Americans are rightfully demanding a more efficient, streamlined healthcare experience, and health data sharing underpins the patient experience from faster check-in to more informed decision-making to the future of population health,” Jay Nakashima, executive director of eHealth Exchange, said in a press release.

“We’re thrilled to support this health data sharing at scale with 12 billion transactions annually, and continue to expand until health data sharing is ubiquitous,” Nakashima continued.

The eHealth Exchange network operates in 75 percent of all US hospitals, connects to 61 regional or state HIEs, and includes the largest public healthcare programs in the country, including the VA health system.

Earlier this year, eHealth Exchange announced the launch of a competitive grant program to encourage health IT innovation by offering up to $550,000 to organizations pursuing creative approaches that lead to advanced data exchange.  

“With all great technological advances – from the early days of the internet to self-driving cars – early progress is marked by slow, incremental change,” Nakashima said in a public statement at the time of the announcement. “But then a tipping point is reached, and significant innovations happen on what seems like a daily basis.”

“Health data sharing is now at this critical moment, and the eHealth Exchange wants to play an instrumental role in driving toward the health IT future we’ve talked about and worked toward for more than a decade,” Nakashima added.

Proposed projects should encourage data exchange by leveraging HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) or other eHealth Exchange technical specifications.

The HIE requires that all proposals provide specific details regarding implementation, testing, and production.

Awardees of the eHealth Exchange Innovation Grant program must produce an implementation guide for the project that will benefit members of eHealth Exchange, the HIE pointed out.

The eHealth Exchange expects to give as many as three awards, each totaling up to $100,000 per awardee.