Health Information Exchange Group Prioritizes Interoperability

Collabrity Health has launched a new health information exchange (HIE) consortium that aims to increase patient access to data through interoperability and infrastructure improvements.

Collabrity Health members will receive health information exchange as a managed service that includes interoperability services, security and privacy regulations, and infrastructure. By grouping these services together, members will be able to focus on improving healthcare, the company stated.

“Collabrity Health is helping HIEs bring their solutions to market faster – improving access to care for people across the US,” Michael Gagnon, acting chief executive officer of Collabrity Health, stated in the press release.

“Since HIEs facilitate the electronic exchange of data across organizations and are essential to improving patient care, they spend significant resources developing the core infrastructure required to offer interoperability services at scale. By offering economies of scale for these common infrastructure requirements, we help HIEs improve and expand the services they offer to their customers, and by extension, to Americans.”

Collabrity Health’s founders Cognosante, HealtHIE Nevada, and RosettaHealth, developed the new health information exchange consortium.

Non-profit HIEs can join Collabrity Health to reduce their operating costs, onboard new members quicker, reduce time to market for enhancements to HIE functionality, and increase revenue opportunities with shared service offerings, according to the company.

Health information exchanges can receive key services when they join the new consortium, including technology infrastructure support and flexibility with implementation timelines. Members can join the Collabrity Health Marketplace and offer services to or acquire services from other health information exchange members.

Health information exchanges may simplify the goal of achieving widespread interoperability in the healthcare industry. HIEs can help facilitate admission, discharge, and transfer information between different health systems, which may assist payers and providers in complying with the CMS Interoperability and Patient Access final rule.

And as of late, creating HIE consortia has proven a key step in improving interoperability and access. At the beginning of 2021, a group of six state and regional health information exchanges formed a consortium to increase interoperability.

Their goals were to improve patient data exchange by creating solutions that increased interoperability for all healthcare stakeholders, distribute healthcare insights for federal agencies to increase health IT innovation, and further initiatives that promote patient data exchange nationwide.

Health information exchange consortiums have also helped states and health systems reduce healthcare costs. Alaska’s health information exchange, healtheConnect Alaska, joined a health IT consortium that connected them with stateside HIEs.

The shared values and technologies between the HIEs allowed healtheConnect to gain innovation insights and cut down spending due to shared technology costs.