Dive Brief:

• Hawaii Health Systems Corp (HHSC), which oversees 13 state medical facilities, has just signed a data sharing agreement with the Hawaii Health Information Exchange (HHIE) to share patient medical records electronically with other community healthcare providers and hospitals around the state, according to a report in Pacific Business News.
• HHSC joins a growing collective under the non-profit HHIE data-sharing umbrella, including Castle Medical Center, Hawaii Pacific Health, The Queen's Medical Center and HMSA. The new agreement will start with HHSC's assets in the West Hawaii and Maui regions. Once integrated, the group should be able to share patient data across dozens of EHR platforms.
• "The physicians and hospitals across the state have 30 different kinds of electronic health record systems," HHIE executive director Christine Sakuda told the news outlet. "We help connect physicians on those different electronic systems. It's the job of the HHIE to get healthcare information the hands of providers to make decisions and to get real-time health information in the hands of providers to make decisions."

Dive Insight:

There are two i’s in Hawaii, and apparently, they both stand for "interoperability."

While much of the industry is wrestling with Meaningful Use issues, the state of Hawaii is moving along a clear and focused path toward interoperability that began back in 2006. The Hawaii HIE is a non-profit organization, "designated by the state to develop a seamless, effective, and secure statewide health information exchange that ultimately links to the nationwide health information network," according to the organization's website. 

Chartered by the state, supported by providers and partnered with major players in Hawaii’s healthcare community, this non-governmental organization is building a statewide interoperable platform one provider at a time. While the size of the state may play a factor, this is still impressive work.