The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT announced Monday that the two interoperability alliances have crossed the finish line and are now on board as Qualified Health Information Networks capable of nationwide health data exchange with other QHINs under the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement.
WHY IT MATTERS
CommonWell Health Alliance, which includes many electronic health record vendor members – including Oracle Health, athenahealth, Greenway, Meditech and others – committed TEFCA participation in September 2022 following the release of the QHIN application by ONC’s recognized coordinating entity , the Sequoia Project.
By then, more than 2.6 billion records had already been exchanged through the CommonWell network, which was created in 2013 by competing EHR vendors, through providers’ federated patient information sharing and the Carequality Framework used by its members.
Like CommonWell, the Kno2 data exchange platform was inaugurated last year as part of the first cohort of organizations approved to implement TEFCA and is now also a fully integrated QHIN.
“Kno2’s role as a QHIN reinforces our core message: interoperability is at the heart of healthcare transformation,” Jon Elwell, CEO of Kno2, said in a separate announcement on Monday.
Current and future partners of Kno2 will have access to QHIN capabilities, the company said on its website.
“This appointment positions Kno2 to continue harnessing the power of communications to solve healthcare’s most pressing challenges, including reducing costs, improving provider experience and patient outcomes, and reducing the differences in care,” he said.
Paul Wilder, executive director of the CommonWell Health Alliance, called the alliance’s QHIN designation “a natural extension of our mission and progress to date” in a website statement.
“Data must flow with the patient throughout their health journey,” added Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager at Oracle Health and Oracle Life Sciences.
She called CommonWell’s QHIN status announcement a “milestone” to ensure “that patients and their providers have the right data at the right time.”
THE BIG TREND
With a number of recent goals, including the TEFCA exchange, achieved, ONC is focused on driving its 2024 interoperability roadmap.
Micky Tripathi, ONC National Coordinator, noted that there are regulations governing artificial intelligence transparency and the FAST path to FHIR exchange Healthcare IT news earlier this month that the agency has received a lot of positive feedback from healthcare stakeholders.
The Sequoia Project last week accepted comments on TEFCA 2.0, where it will functionally address FHIR implementation and facilitate FHIR exchange among QHINs, and is expected to complete the update of the common agreement within the first quarter.
ON THE RECORD
“These additional QHINs expand TEFCA’s reach and provide additional connectivity choices for patients, healthcare providers, hospitals, public health authorities, health insurers and other authorized healthcare professionals,” Tripathi said in the announcement.
“The designation of these two QHINs, which brings the total number of QHINs to seven, highlights the rapid expansion of the TEFCA Exchange and the support of more and more leaders around the TEFCA Exchange,” said Mariann Yeager, CEO of the Sequoia Project.
Andrea Fox is editor-in-chief of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.