Dive Brief:
- Thirty-four Chicagoland hospitals -- or about a third of the area's hospitals -- have come together to launch a health information exchange, which they're expecting to go live with early next year.
- The new network, MetroChicago HIE, will rely on the Direct messaging protocols developed by the federal government, a package of electronic messaging standards allowing for the transmission of of basic, encrypted medical information.
- The project will require participating hospitals to work around EMRs of several types, notably but not limited to Epic, Cerner and Meditech enterprise EMR systems, as well as finding ways to offer HIE services to office-based physicians.
Dive Insight:
It's exciting to see a major project launch in a pivotal market like Chicago, where many prominent health systems are based. It's hard to tell how much good can be done with the HIE relying wholly on Direct project basics, but there's one way to find out, and it seems that the hospitals are ready to do so. What's even more interesting is that the hospitals involved actually see a business case for the technology, a conviction that's been largely absent in many other HIE efforts. Let's see if they're right.