Verizon Business launched a new platform Wednesday at HIMSS that will allow more than 350,000 physicians to digitally share patient notes by the end of the summer.

Called the The Verizon Medical Data Exchange, the platform provides a way for medical transcriptionists to share notes detailing patients' care and treatment with doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers.

Verizon Business developed the platform for the Medical Transcription Service Consortium under an agreement announced in Nov. 2009. The consortium was formed by ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business, and the not-for-profit Medical Transcription Industry Association (MTIA). Medical transcription companies MD-IT,  MedQuist, MxSecure, Sten-Tel and Webmedx are also charter members of the consortium.

MD-IT and MedQuist currently are using the platform. By August, when the Medical Data Exchange is expected to be in use by all of the consortium's members, 350,000-plus physicians, more than 2,700 clinics and nearly 2,500 hospitals will be supported.

"We just started rolling out the Verizon Medical Data Exchange to our clients, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive," said Robin Daigh, vice president – marketing and business development, of Boulder, Colo.-based MD-IT.  "Physicians appreciate the ease with which they can share clinical documents and access patient records online. Office staffs are already eliminating hours of administrative time otherwise spent printing, faxing, scanning and filing documents."

The Medical Transcription Industry Association estimates that its members create and electronically archive nearly 60 percent of the more than 1.2 billion clinical notes produced in the U.S. each year. Approximately 25 percent of these records currently are shared among healthcare providers, including other physicians, hospitals and insurance companies.  

"Pervasive sharing of patient information can save lives, but complex challenges have stood in the way of health IT solutions," said Peter Tippett, vice president, security solutions and enterprise innovation for Verizon Business.  "The Verizon Medical Data Exchange provides a means to accelerate the sharing of a wide range of digital health information between physicians and healthcare organizations. Digital record sharing among the entire health information ecosystem can help speed patient diagnoses while enabling health care organizations to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively," Tippett said.

Officials said the Verizon Medical Data Exchange is designed to meet the requirements of the Nationwide Health Information Network. The platform uses a central directory to automatically verify the identities of senders and recipients so that sensitive patient medical information can be shared only with authorized users. Information flowing over the platform is also encrypted for an additional layer of security and privacy. Certification by a qualified third party is required for companies using the platform, helping ensure that IT systems and internal controls meet the requirements of the Medical Transcription Service Consortium, said officials.

"Interoperability, privacy and security are challenges that hospitals, physicians and clinics face when trying to exchange records electronically," said George Japak, managing director, ICSA Labs, in a statement in Nov. 2009.  "The goal of the consortium is to help advance the healthcare industry through the digital exchange of physician-dictated notes in a common format so that information technology becomes an enabler for better patient care and greater efficiency among health care providers."

"The Verizon Medical Data Exchange platform is exactly the kind of practical and secure solution the healthcare industry needs to not just reduce costs but improve overall efficiencies," added Amy Larsen DeCarlo, principal analyst – managed IT services, at Washington-based research firm Current Analysis. "The exchange provides a nationally available platform that will help accelerate the adoption of electronic health records and scale to meet future data sharing requirements across the health care ecosystem."