Dive Brief:
- Carequality and CommonWell Health Alliance have joined forces to increase data exchange and improve interoperability among healthcare providers.
- Under the collaboration CommonWell will implement Carequality’s interoperability framework on behalf of its members and clients, allowing them to share data with any provider participating in Carequality.
- The collaboration’s initial focus will be on boosting the ability of providers to request and retrieve patient records electronically from other providers, but could be expanded to other areas within health IT, the groups said.
Dive Insight:
The aim is to make it easier for providers to access relevant health information when they are making decisions about patient care or treatment, officials said. CommonWell and Carequality parent organization The Sequoia Project plan to explore additional collaborations in the future.
“There was always collaborative dialogue in terms of how we wanted this work to come together,” Mariann Yeager, CEO of The Sequoia Project, told Healthcare IT News. “But, the efforts were really in formative stages early on, and it grew to a point where once there was traction, momentum that it was time to figure out how to get these activities interconnected.”
HHS’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has made interoperability a major priority. In February, HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced that companies that provide 90% of EHRs used by U.S. hospitals had committed to three core components of interoperability: consumer access, standards and preventing information blocking.
At the Connected Health Conference on Tuesday, ONC and private sector partners showcased their progress in consolidating individuals’ medications into a single list on a mobile app.