Concord Hospital, the New Hampshire regional medical center, has chosen Orion Health's Rhapsody Integration Engine to be the new platform to migrate and manage message exchange for their health information system (HIS).

The Rhapsody engine will at first supplement, and then ultimately supplant the acute care hospital's current use of the Sun Microsystems integrator, eGate.

"We were looking for an innovative technology solution that would not only work with our short-term goal of implementing a new electronic medical record, but also meet our long-term goal of serving as an application development tool to integrate various databases into our overall HIS," says Chris Baker, Concord Hospital's director of application development.

Paul Viskovich, Orion Health President of North America and EMEA, lauds the hospital for being "proactive," choosing to turn a purchasing decision "into an opportunity to build a platform for the future."

"By using standardized technology, they not only improve efficiencies in how information is shared, but leverage a proven solution to extend and expand their investment and [the] functionality their HIS can provide," he said.

The Rhapsody system will eventually manage as many as 200,000 messages per day for the hospital – which has been voted among the Top 100 "Most Wired" providers by Hospitals and Health Networks magazine for three straight years – and offers a simplified migration path from existing integration engines.

"Because we will be moving from eGate, the migration path was especially important," says Baker, "and the migration toolkit that converts eGate code into Rhapsody was another important factor in our decision."