Billed as the nation’s largest health information exchange organization, the Indiana HIE (IHIE) is poised to scale up and to expand its business plans, which includes the launch of a new professional services organization to serve other HIEs.

The HIE counts 10 million patients, more than 19,000 physicians, more than 80 facilities among its stakeholders. IHIE is responsible for what its executives call "an ocean of information.” That means more than four billion pieces of clinical data in the repository. The exchange delivers three million health transactions daily.
 
IHIE works with hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics and physician practices throughout Indiana to ensure 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, officials said, 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 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, said Harold J. Apple, president and CEO of IHIE.

"Our vision is to establish a model of health information exchange for the nation," said Apple. "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."

Also, 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," said Randall Porter, assistant vice president, AT&T ForHealth. "We believe that the future of healthcare is a connected one – where information will be exchanged across states, regions, and eventually across the nation. Our new relationship with IHIE as the largest exchange across the country will be essential to realizing that vision."