CSC Supports New York eHealth Collaborative in Trial Implementation of Nationwide Health Information Network

The United States took another step toward the goal of a Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) with a successful basic exchange of summary patient information among nine select organizations representing broad-based state and regional Health Information Exchanges (HIEs). CSC worked with one of these organizations — the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC)—to help build consensus among the varied stakeholders and guide them through the intricacies of government contracting.

Health Exchange: The Foundation for Better Healthcare

In September 2007, the nine organizations were awarded contracts totaling $22.5 million by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (HHS ONC) for a trial implementation that would build on the NHIN prototype architecture demonstration.

The goal was to develop a standardized, seamless and secure set-up for the exchange of summary patient information among the selected HIEs. This connection of Health Information Exchanges is fundamental to building the “network of networks,” the NHIN, which promises to transform healthcare delivery by making patient information available when and where it’s needed.

Out of Diversity, Oneness

NYeC (pronounced “nice”) is a public-private health information partnership created in 2006 by healthcare leaders in New York State to build consensus on state health IT policy and collaborate on state and regional health IT implementation efforts [learn more about NYeC].

For the trial implementation, NYeC’s challenge was to work with two regional health information organizations (RHIOs) — the New York Clinical Information Exchange (NYCLIX), Inc. and the Long Island Patient Information Exchange (LIPIX) — to successfully exchange “live” electronic patient summary records between two of their participating providers, Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY) and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System. Those RHIOs then demonstrated exchange of “test” patient summary records with other HIE projects across the country.

The trial implementation in LIPIX and NYCLIX was architected to be scalable across a diverse group of stakeholders in the two RHIOs, including:

• Dozens of physician groups
• More than 40 hospitals
• A variety of community care, long-term care and home care service providers/facilities serving thousands of patients in the New York City metropolitan area
• Insurers
• Purchasers
• Multiple government entities

CSC served as NYeC’s project manager, systems integrator and technical architect, and general technical advisor. CSC’s role involved providing support through every phase of the trial implementation —from architecting and testing clinical data interfaces to integration across implementation sites. These clinical data interfaces provide the foundation for the standards and protocols that ensure NYeC’s ability to exchange data with future NHIN-compliant entities.

CSC’s central role was to assist NYeC in building consensus among the diverse stakeholders, working through the technical and policy issues, and meeting complex federal compliance requirements while achieving their business goals. To play this role, we leveraged our decades of experience in government contracting, healthcare information exchange and policy formulation.

Exchanging Information While Maintaining Privacy

During the trial implementation, patient summary information was successfully exchanged over the Internet by the participating organizations while meeting the stringent information security and privacy protection standards specified by HHS.

“The challenge was to quickly share patient records in one part of the country with a recipient in another part of country,” says CSC’s project manager June Cho. “The system had to recognize the requestor, validate that person’s credentials to receive the information, and ensure security and privacy of information for the consenting patient. We set up scenarios so the team could work through different situations.”

The Next Step: Toward Widespread Adoption of Health IT

Having proved that large, diverse Health Information Exchanges can successfully work together to exchange patient information data among their providers, the next step will be to exchange “live” patient data in late 2009. As one of a small group of systems integrators privileged to have been involved in both phases of NHIN — prototype architecture as well as trial implementation —CSC expects to be part of future phases as well.

Meanwhile, the NHIN Health Information Exchanges’ specifications and related testing materials have been placed in the public domain to facilitate widespread participation in NHIN and encourage wider adoption of electronic health records.

For New York State, the success of the trial implementation has given a boost to the state’s pioneering efforts to reform healthcare and demonstrate leadership in the adoption of health information technology. The NHIN trial Implementation project will also support the development and implementation of the Statewide Health Information Network for New York (SHIN-NY).

Related Information

Learn about how we can help states with planning and funding for health IT efforts.

Read a case study on the CSC-led Connecting for Health’s prototype NHIN demonstration.

Contact CSC Health Services.