Also looking ahead to Stage 2, Florida HIE sees that phase of the meaningful use program as its opportune time to bring EHR vendors into the exchange’s mission.

“We're looking to connect a lot of the EHR vendors — that’s kind of our push for this year,” Florida HIE program director Janet Hofmeister said. “Generally, we’re going to see a lot more use cases, such as an EHR that can use Direct to inform someone of an event.”

Low-hanging fruit appears anytime a patient is admitted to a hospital, Hofmesiter said. That notification can then go to a primary care or any other doctor and to the health insurance company. “That’s just one use case,” Hofmesiter explained in this interview, “but I think it will have a profound effect on healthcare as it’s implemented across the country.”

 Podcast: Listen as Janet Hofmeister (pictured at left), Carol Robinson and Micky Tripathi discuss the challenges that HIEs face as the industry sheds its HIE 1.0 skin and share insights about what form the new HIE 2.0 might take.

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Indeed, Stage 2 sets the foundation for attesting providers to exchange records, use the structured information for patient care, incorporate it into an EHR. That same information will also be shared with patients, enabling what national coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, described during the Jan 29 meeting as “a new ecosystem of business and technology innovations” that are patient-centric and designed to help users coordinate care, manage health finances, and make critical health decisions based on applicable and available information.

“A milestone that will be looked back on is stage 2 standards,” Mostashari predicted, “and everything else that goes along with making those ‘standards-in-committee’ into ‘exchange-in-communities.’”

The new shape of HIE

In a corner room of the Venetian Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas literally packed with reporters, at last year’s HIMSS conference Mostashari shared a thought representative of other government officials and private sector healthcare professionals working to implement and advance information exchange. Yet, one that had not been remarked so memorably.

“I refuse to speak of HIE as a noun,” the ONC head said. “It’s a verb.”

The phrase took root and has since sprouted. During the same Jan. 2013 meeting wherein Tripathi declared the arrival of HIE 2.0, panelists expressed another sentiment at once obvious and in need of being stated: Business value for providers more than anything else, finally, will drive the growth of HIE.