The Santa Barbara County (Calif.) Care Data Exchange has closed, brought down by a mix of funding issues and privacy concerns. The Exchange, which was perhaps the oldest RHIO in the country, was launched in 1998 with $10 million in funding from the California Healthcare Foundation. While Exchange members had figured out how to share information securely, the organizations involved were still concerned about their legal liability in the event that the data fell into the wrong hands, according to former acting chairman Robert Reid. Also, the group was struggling with paying for operating costs, including the cost of building filters which would hold back sensitive information from being seen by other RHIO participants. With the Exchange closing, the California Healthcare Foundation is considering turning the RHIO software into an open source product.
To learn more about the closure:
- read this piece from Government Health IT