Southeast Michigan Beacon Community Establishes BeaconLink2Health, Groundbreaking Health Information Exchange in Southeast Michi

DETROIT, Feb. 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Southeast Michigan Beacon Community (SEMBC) announced today that it has started implementation of BeaconLink2Health, an all-new Health Information Exchange (HIE). BeaconLink2Health will deliver exchange capabilities previously unavailable in Southeast Michigan for health care providers to trusted, secure access to comprehensive patient electronic Protected Health Information (PHI) for improved patient care. This will be achieved through a community-level patient record of care.

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Like most multi-stakeholder, community-based HIEs, BeaconLink2Health will provide connections that will enable trusted, secure sharing and exchange of patients' electronic health records for all participating providers in the health care delivery system. This includes participating physicians, health systems and hospitals, physician organizations, other HIEs, laboratories, prescription benefit providers, and imaging centers.  What will make BeaconLink2Health different from other area HIEs is its unique capability to allow providers to access and analyze PHI on numerous levels – by individual patients, and for larger defined segments of the population.  These capabilities enable care providers to improve care coordination and quality and to deliver better patient outcomes and health status, not only for individual patients, but for these defined populations.

Through BeaconLink2Health, a participating emergency room physician will now have access to the patient's health history report from his primary care physician (who also participates with BeaconLink2Health) who is affiliated with a different health system across town. This comprehensive point-of-care record is a significant improvement to patient care made possible through this new Health Information Exchange created for Southeast Michigan.  

"The strategy, architecture, and design for BeaconLink2Health is the product of collaborative efforts between the Beacon membership, and brings the best technologies for both data connectivity and end-user clinical-decision-support to our community," said Leland Babitch, M.D., Chief Medical Information Officer at The Detroit Medical Center and Chair of the SEMBC HIE Implementation Workgroup. "We're excited to have reached this point in our contracting and design processes, and look forward to the collective benefits associated with BeaconLink2Health."

"As a Beacon Community, our objective with BeaconLink2Health is to help build and strengthen the health information technology infrastructure and exchange capabilities for our entire community that can deliver a new level of sustained care quality and efficiency for years to come.  BeaconLink2Health does that," said Terrisca Des Jardins, Director of the Southeast Michigan Beacon Community. "This is something not previously available in Southeast Michigan that can help position our region and state as leaders in innovative solutions for the most pressing health care needs for years to come." The Southeast Michigan Beacon Community is one of 17 Beacon Communities in the U.S. established by The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to coordinate and implement advanced health information technology and health information exchange.

To execute the build and implementation of BeaconLink2Health, the Southeast Michigan Beacon Community has developed a unique multi-partner solution in which Medicity will manage the collection and exchange of PHI. Covisint will develop and manage the clinical data repository, community level evidence-based care gaps and alerts, single sign-on technology, and care coordination tools.  Combined, Medicity and Covisint will deliver unprecedented flexibility of trusted, secure access and analysis of comprehensive electronic patient records at the point of care.   

"Electronic medical records have made a significant difference in the practice of medicine," said Herbert Smitherman, M.D., SEMBC Executive Board Co-chair and Assistant Dean, Community and Urban Health, Wayne State University. "BeaconLink2Health takes electronic patient information to a whole new level. I am very excited about having this level of information available when developing care plans for my patients."

Current BeaconLink2Health plans call for integration of physicians into the system beginning in the second quarter of 2012.

About the Southeast Michigan Beacon Community (SEMBC)
The Southeast Michigan Beacon Community (SEMBC) is one of 17 Beacon Communities established in the United States by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). Detroit was awarded a $16 million federal cooperative agreement from the ONC in September 2010 to fund this major initiative. It is the goal of the SEMBC to help demonstrate the vision of a future where hospitals, clinicians and patients are meaningful users of health IT, and together as a community, achieve measurable improvements in health care quality, safety, efficiency and population health. For more information, visit www.sembc.org.  

About Covisint, a Compuware Company
Detroit-based Covisint, a Compuware (Nasdaq: CPWR) company, enables information ecosystems that quickly revolutionize organizations by providing secure communication and collaboration between people and systems in remarkably simple ways. Covisint is a recognized cloud computing pioneer driving the on-demand revolution that helps organizations connect, communicate and collaborate with their partners – enabling anywhere, anytime information. Learn more at www.covisint.com.

About Medicity
Medicity, whose headquarters are in Salt Lake City, is the leading innovator and largest provider of health information exchange technology – with more than 800 hospitals and 250,000 end users in its connected ecosystem. Medicity's solutions empower hospitals, physicians and HIEs with secure access to and exchange of health information – improving the quality and efficiency of patient care locally, regionally and nationally. For more information, visit www.medicity.com.

Press Contacts
Scott Turske
Communications Manager
Southeast Michigan Beacon Community
Office: 313-638-2885
Mobile: 248-892-3241
Email: [email protected]

Doug Anter
Public Relations Manager
Compuware Covisint
Office: 313-227-0127
Mobile: 248-342-2200
Email: [email protected]

Amendola Communications for Medicity
Janet Cabibbo
Office: 480-664-8412, ext. 15
Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Southeast Michigan Beacon Community