The 10-year-old eHealth Initiative has released Phase II of its 2011 HIE Toolkit. Like the first two iterations of the toolkit, which were issued in 2006 and 2008, the latest version incorporates lessons learned by operational health information exchanges.
Phase I of the toolkit, which came out in April, addressed the components of planning an HIE, including governance, legal and information sharing agreements, and patient privacy issues. Phase II is a primer for building an HIE. Among the areas it covers:
- Creating a sustainable model.
- Technical aspects of connectivity.
- Marketing and promoting of HIEs.
- Enhancing services.
- Tracking progress.
eHI developed content for the toolkit in collaboration with the steering committee of its Connecting Communities workgroup, as well as through interviews with leaders in the HIE field. Axolotl, a connectivity vendor that's now part of OptumInsight (formerly Ingenix), contributed financial support for the toolkit.
Many of the toolkit's principles and strategies were derived from eHI's 2010 National Progress Report. Nearly 200 HIE initiatives responded to eHI's 2010 survey. Seventy-three of those organizations were operational, compared with 57 in 2009.
To learn more:
- register to view the HIE toolkit
- read the Axolotl press release
- check out eHI's 2010 progress report (.pdf)