What is stifling innovation at Health Information Exchanges?

Innovation is not what Health Information exchanges are focusing on right. The reason is that there is enough work pending to be done on improving deployment rates performance and usability. The Stages 2 and 3 implementation of the Meaningful Use program have HIEs as a major component. Its adoption although in higher single digits now has been steady. In the process there have been multiple instances of vendors exiting from the market and more expected to follow suit. Overall, their impact on better care co-ordination and interoperability has started becoming evident. A governance framework has been setup by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT to provide a guiding model for HIE governance. According to the framework, there are four principles of paramount importance which should pervade all governance models. These principles in reality are not binding in any form and are expected to act as guidance. The four tenets include:

• Trust: on matter involving patient privacy, meaningful choice and data management
• Business: Transparency in operations and finances
• Technical: Use standards to implement principles and further interoperability
• Organizational: Identify the best approaches to achieve the means

Reports done by surveys have indicated that HIEs have achieved commendable progress in areas like portal access, orders and results, and clinician messaging. The aim is to try and achieve a state where information related to a patient can flow electronically across organizations, vendors and geographic boundaries. A national information exchange governance forum has been also created to make it possible for the best practices followed across regional HIEs to be shared. This is not only going to help the members but also a go a long way is assuring privacy and security of electronic exchange.

Some of the areas in where HIEs are falling short of expectations include notifications and alerts, queries across networks and clinical alignment. Other issues of concern include the variability of technical standards and policies related to who should have access to patient information. All these are acting as major hurdles which need to be overcome. The stakeholders are looking up to ONC to find solutions to these issues. One of the suggestions put forth is to define the baseline standards and modify them when the market by and large moves to it. But all future standards and related certifications have to be such so has to enable complete interoperability. For e.g. an EHR which receives data should be able to use right away. This will also require a synergized effort directed towards making key stakeholders IT literate with in quick time. They will need to be aware of all the relevant technical standards and protocols related to data exchange. ONC on its part has acknowledged the concerns of the stakeholders and is constantly taking feedback from vendors, providers and others involved enabling them to suggest solutions. That matters are in a state of flux and that solutions will have to evolve with time is understood by all.

Given how things stand today, HIEs are more or less to be looked upon as startup businesses. People who currently are and will be part of the workforce will need to have a set of diverse skills. They will be expected to learn and deliver as various models start taking shape. From governance to policies to technical infrastructure, everything is expected to evolve into something tangible and reliable in the future so as to ensure long-term sustainability. All the neo care concepts which are being promoted like patient-centered medical home and population health management depend heavily on information exchange. Also, with the widespread use of electronic health records, HIE will end up a “necessary tool“ for providing affordable and high quality care. In fact many leaders in the Health IT have recommended that the best way to further HIE adoption could be by showing its value to healthcare reforms rather than pushing it as a regulatory step.

Healthcare software testing can be an eye-opener in this case as well. The feedback collated from user acceptance testing can also help provide insights into the needs of the patients and users of the systems. If there is a regular mechanism to test and record the feedback, that would also help HIEs.

We provide healthcare software development services. If you would like to hire top healthcare software developers from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

The future of Health Information Exchanges

Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) are expected to bring about a huge difference in the healthcare industry because of the nimbleness they are to suppose bring to data availability. This will also mean healthcare software testing will also pick up steam. There are some EHR vendors who currently offer the provision to physicians to exchange data with other practices which are registered to them. Some even go to the extent of offering all other features as are found in standard HIEs to them. But they are restricted in size and scale since it is only those physicians which are registered with the vendors which get entitled to draw the benefits.

HIEs go much beyond. These can be privately or publicly held and help in the transmission of clinical information from EHRs to participating physicians and providers. Most of the information is very holistic and helps in reducing the operational costs and improving the efficiency of practices. EHRs on the contrary hold a lot of information apart from the clinical data like demographics, allergies, laboratory reports etc. The potential benefits made available to group practices and physicians are many. By receiving and sending information, these entities benefit in a number of ways like

• Automation of their administrative tasks
• Availability of real time information at the point of care
• Transparency of processes
• Availability of Decision Support Tools
• Reduction in operational costs
• Qualification for Meaningful Use Incentives
• Increased Competitive advantage
• Improved quality of services

There are many other benefits offered by HIEs in addition to the ones listed above. However, it is not mandatory to find all of these offerings at a single HIE. It is left to the physicians to exercise their judgment before deciding to join one such organization. There are many reasons for the buzz around creation of HIEs. Needlessly to say that they enhance the degree of safety, quality and cost reduction otherwise possible without their usage. But one of the major driving factors has been the push provided by the Federal Funding.

Through the HITECH ACT, which stands for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health, an amount of 2 billion dollars has been put aside by the federal reserve for creation and expansion of HIE infrastructure. HIEs fall under the purview of both the State, as well as the Federal government laws for finalizing the regulations of its operations esp. related to the privacy and security concerns of handling patient information. With the broad guidelines made available by the Federal government, the state laws determine the rules to be followed to set up the infrastructure, get the required certification to operate and specific ones for patient information protection. HIEs as such do not directly fall under the HIPAA act. But since it has to deal with entities which are covered by HIPAA e.g. providers, clearing houses etc. HIEs are expected to exercise and follow all the rules so as to comply with the privacy and security provisions as per the Act.

HIEs can act both as repositories and conduits for health information based entirely on the model that they want to follow. In the centralized model, data is stored in a central repository and is made available to members based on need. The advantage of doing this is that it leads to standardization of data. There are policies defined for ensuring this. In the federated model, the data stays at the source with HIEs providing pointers to them. This makes it possible for providers and physicians to get more control over the data unlike the previous one.

Overall, the involvement required by physicians in HIE governance is critical to their fraternity. From knowing how the model is developing in their states to how their data will be used, all this is important for physicians they decide to join one. There is one school of thought which is kind of making the physicians slightly apprehensive about their participation in HIEs. According to them, the data which is available with HIEs could be used to evaluate physicians or for profiling purpose. Thus all the more reason for physicians to know who has what access to the data available with HIEs and how is it supposed to be used.

We provide healthcare IT services. If you would like to hire healthcare software development experts from our team, please get in touch with us at Mindfire Solutions.

Domain Based HealthCare Testing Services

When the topic comes to the Healthcare Software Testing India, most clients are hesitate to outsource their work to outside vender with number of causes like, the tester who test my project has any kind of knowledge on medical application? Are they aware of medical terms like EHR (Electronic Health Records), EMR (Electronic Medical Records), CCHIT, Sure Script, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability), HL7 etc.? Can they test PMS (Practice Management Systems) system? Are they well known what are SureScript and all? Mindfire Solutions, a twelve years old software giant provides Offshore Healthcare Testing services to its customer across the globe for more than five years. We are a team of Software and Quality Assurance professionals with experience in all technology of the IT industry working with Fortune 500 companies as well as early and mid-stage start-ups. Our specialties include hands-on testing and developing solutions for testing and improving quality of Software Products on Different Domains like, Healthcare, Game, CMS (Content Management System) etc.

Most of our client who are outsources their project to us are very happy about the Quality of Product we delivered to them and as a benefit they see an exponential growth in term of quality when they talk with their clients. We have a very dedicated test team who are regularly updates their knowledge on Healthcare Testing. Our QA members are hand on experience in Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Testing, Patient Health Records (PHR) Testing, Ambulatory Care management Testing, Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS, LIS) Testing and all. On the top of that our testing guys can help you to CCHIT (Certification Commission for Health Information Technology) and Meaningful use (MU) certification by testing your medical application.  By adding expertise, knowledge, and passion we have a unique combination of professionals dedicated to the adoption and test the medical application. We will not only have the experience that you need, but also the latest healthcare industry knowledge and the passion to support and guide you every step of the way. We have following the complete testing cycle while we take any project in into the account.

With ISTQB (International Software Testing Qualifications Board) certification our test engineers can perform usability testing or Integrating testing or performance testing on healthcare application to get optimum result for our client. Our testing team has work experience to test Healthcare Apps Platform testing on mobile applications like on Android, iPhone, iPad, etc. we are considered thought leaders healthcare testing and perform Test Automation and Performance Testing using open source technologies such as JMeter, Selenium Testing Services, QTP and provide customized solutions to our partners resulting in huge ROI for them.

Mindfire Solutions is a 12-year old leading Software Development and IT services company with a strong track record of working with SMBs like you who are present across geographies. Our 750+ spirited software engineers located across three advanced development centres in India have collectively executed more than 1000 projects for our 300+ client base. Along with a guaranteed Mindfire promise of unparalleled quality, we also have 100 hours risk free trial* for new clients.