Indiana Health Information Exchange Envisions A Connected Nation

INDIANAPOLIS, Feb. 9, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Ten million patients, more than 19,000 physicians, over 80 facilities. As the nation's largest health information exchange organization, the Indiana Health Information Exchange, Inc. (IHIE) is responsible for an ocean of information. In fact, it currently has more than four billion pieces of clinical data in the repository and delivers three million highly-secure health transactions daily.

IHIE works with hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics and physician practices throughout Indiana to ensure that health information is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there to help improve care coordination and patient outcomes.

A fundamental aspect of IHIE's services is aggregating clinical data through interface integrations with healthcare providers to support applications such as the DOCS4DOCS® service, Quality Health First® Program and the Indiana Network for Patient Care. The health information exchange as well as these clinical applications were developed by the Regenstrief Institute, a world-renowned medical informatics research organization, and are supported and delivered by IHIE.

IHIE's data integration is rapidly expanding beyond its current capacity, creating the need for a scalable solution to help connect more hospitals and facilities to the exchange. Deploying AT&T* Healthcare Community Online powered by Covisint, will position IHIE to boost support of its existing community, respond to new providers' immediate needs and expand business plans.

IHIE will initially implement AT&T Healthcare Community Online's Clinical Message Exchange in three key hospitals, providing a highly-secure, scalable and flexible clinical interface integration platform. This will improve IHIE's ability to accelerate data integration processes within the exchange, and make clinical data available in a highly-secure manner across the entire community of care. IHIE has plans to add more than 60 additional hospitals to the platform this year.

This is the beginning of what IHIE and AT&T believe is a nationwide opportunity for collaboration.

"Our vision is to establish a model of health information exchange for the nation," said Harold J. Apple, President and Chief Executive Officer of IHIE. "We operate the most advanced system for connecting disparate healthcare IT systems in the nation, and AT&T is helping us take our efforts to the next level."

Additionally, IHIE is launching a professional services organization to serve regional and state HIEs, and large health systems across the country. IHIE Professional Services will provide planning and advisory services for all aspects of health information exchange, including governance, strategic planning, policy, trust, stakeholder commitment, product delivery and sustainability. IHIE and AT&T will collaborate on the development and deployment of these services.

"The coordinated collaborative care market is on the brink of transformation. We believe that the future of healthcare is a connected one - where information will be exchanged across states, regions, and eventually across the nation," said Randall Porter, Assistant Vice President, AT&T ForHealth. "Our new relationship with IHIE as the largest exchange across the country will be essential to realizing that vision."

Features of AT&T's Clinical Message Exchange to be utilized by IHIE:

Any-to-any messaging to automate point-to-point communication

Messaging Hub enabling all message translation and routing

Message tracking for audit logging for HIPAA and HITECH purposes

Highly-secure communication and collaboration capabilities across network domains and organizations

AT&T Healthcare Community Online will be demonstrated at the AT&T booth #3829 in Las Vegas at HIMSS12 from Feb. 20 - Feb. 24, 2012.

*AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.

About the Indiana Health Information Exchange

Indiana Health Information Exchange, Inc. (IHIE) is the nation's largest health information exchange organization. IHIE is responsible for securely delivering clinical information to assist with care coordination and improving patient outcomes to more than 80 hospitals and 19,000 physicians. Healthcare providers trust IHIE to deliver critical patient data when and where it is needed most. In addition to hospitals, IHIE also serves long-term care facilities, immediate care centers, public health centers and freestanding labs and imaging centers. IHIE is a non-profit corporation formed by the Regenstrief Institute, private hospitals, local and state health departments, BioCrossroads and other prominent organizations in Indiana. To learn more, visit www.ihie.org

About AT&T

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