Eastern Connecticut Health Network, Inc. (ECHN) is building an HIE, and the health system has tapped MobileMD to help get the job done, signing a five-year agreement.

Yardley, Pa.-based MobileMD will provide connectivity to community physicians as well as ECHN's five outreach sites, two hospitals, and surrounding medical community including Visiting Nurse and Health Services Corporation, skilled nursing home and rehabilitation center and other providers.

MobileMD offers a cloud-based 4D HIE. MobileMD bills the technology as providing secure clinical and administrative data exchange among all providers caring for patients within a community regardless of location, EMR technology or vendor. The company will deploy its 4D HIE suite that includes a patient portal and connected health record.

ECHN, a not-for-profit health care system serving 19 towns in eastern Connecticut, through its network of affiliates, plans to offer the exchange to the entire Manchester-area medical community, including that of other healthcare organizations, and serves as a foundational element to ECHN's accountable care organization (ACO) strategy.

"ECHN looks forward to working with MobileMD as the means to establish closer communications with community providers,” said ECHN Vice President for Information Services Charles Covin. “The MobileMD product suite will permit all members of the provider community to better communicate and share pertinent information in a secure manner.”

"I believe health information technology is in the midst of a paradigm shift on many levels," said MobileMD's CEO Todd Fisher. "Perhaps most significantly, it is becoming increasingly clear that HIT has to serve entire care communities in addition to and in conjunction with specific healthcare entities. To that end, MobileMD is looking forward to working with ECHN to serve its community of providers and patients in a way that supports better care through improved information flow, accessibility, and analysis."