Informatics Corporation of America (ICA), which develops health information exchange technology, has joined the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC), a public-private multi-state working group of vendors and state officials, to help develop specs for “plug and play” connectivity between EHRs and HIEs.

Originally led by New York, the expanded workgroup now includes federally designated counterparts in California, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Oregon – representing approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population.

The collaboration leverages existing published standards for interoperability from the Office of the National Coordinator. Officials say the goal of the effort is to establish a single set of easily implementable standards that will enable connection and adoption of EHRs and HIEs.

“This collaboration is a crucial step towards solving interoperability problems, and we are very happy to have ICA on board,” said David Whitlinger, executive director of NYeC. “Collectively, this group is now looking forward to widespread adoption and market preference for the products that employ the specifications it has created and will create.”

Participants in the workgroup have agreed to develop strategies, requirements, standards and certification criteria to connect EHRs to HIEs to enable the broad adoption of health information among providers.

The goal, officials say, will be the fully operational connection between EHRs and state, regional and integrated delivery network (IDN) HIEs. Other participating vendors include Allscripts, Axolotl, eClinicalWorks, e-MDs, Greenway Medical Technologies, Intersystems, McKesson Physician Practice Solutions, Medicity, NextGen Healthcare, Sage Healthcare Division and Siemens Healthcare.

“ICA is excited and honored to be participating in this national collaborative workgroup,” said Gary Zegiestowsky, chief executive officer of ICA. “ICA’s growth in the last several years has solidified our reputation as a national player in the HIE market and we can now bring to bear the experience we’ve gained to help make a palpable difference in expanding the use of EHRs through exchanging health information."