The Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative says it is winding down its operations, having made big progress over the past decade and a half enabling technology-driven healthcare improvements in Massachusetts and beyond.

WHY IT MATTERS
Founded in 2005 with the mission of boosting the safety, quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare with technology and data analytics, MAeHC has helped hospitals, practices and others across the state hone their clinical and operational efficiencies over the years.

It has also modeled health IT best practices, policy innovation, interoperability standards development and thought leadership nationwide.

Now, MAeHC officials say the group will distribute many remaining assets to other "like-minded local nonprofits" around Massachusetts.

It will be selling, donating or transferring various assets to third parties, to wind down its own work while enabling continuation of its founding mission by others going forward.

"For the past 15 years, our small but tenacious company has worked alongside organizations from across the healthcare continuum to support their meaningful adoption of technology," said Micky Tripathi, former president and CEO of MAeHC.

"We've also played a major role in advising and leading various industry initiatives in interoperability, standards development, and health IT policy. We're forever grateful to our many stakeholders who have helped us achieve our mission. I'm thrilled that we can now 'pay it forward' by distributing our remaining funds to other organizations working on the innovative use of electronic health information technologies in Massachusetts and beyond."

THE LARGER TREND
In April, we reported that Burlington, Massachusetts-based Arcadia, which specializes in analytics for population health and value-based care, would acquire selected assets of MAeHC. The company said it was impressed by MAeHC's track record with data warehousing, analytics services and implementation support.

As part of the agreement, Tripathi joined Arcadia as chief alliance officer.

MAeHC has also assigned its New England Healthcare Exchange Network contract to the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium, which it notes is a closely allied nonprofit that will continue to support this important function in the Massachusetts marketplace.

MAeHC says it will also be seeking proposals from certain 501(c)(3) charitable organizations in the Bay State to be the recipients of remaining funds.

A request for proposals will be made available by July 1.

ON THE RECORD
"As the company enters this final phase, we can look back at a job well done, with highlights that include making the first interoperable healthcare community in the country, as well as creating an effective and affordable analytics and event-notification infrastructure that helped improve the care of millions of patients around the country," said Dr. Lawrence Garber, chairman of the board at MAeHC.

"We are still looking to the future by ensuring that other organizations can continue to innovate on the unique foundation of HIT assets our company has built over the years," said Christopher Matarazzo, MAeHC president and CEO. "We look forward to what’s next for the industry, and hope the journey takes us closer to the promise of innovative health information technologies."