IHE USA and the Health Story Project will offer testing of Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), at the annual Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North American Connectathon 2013, where health IT systems test information exchange across organizational boundaries to demonstrate the capabilities and benefits of those systems.

The Health Story Project and IHE have collaborated closely since the project’s inception in 2008. Members of this alliance say it leverages IHE integration profiles and the Consolidated CDA standard from Health Level Seven International (HL7) to offer a clear communication path and common language for health IT standards.

A patient’s clinical history offers detailed and valuable health information, data not always available in an accessible format in a digital medical record, officials note. The idea behind the Connectathon demo is show how to share that patient story with clinical data.

As the adoption of interoperable health IT systems continues to grow under the mandate of the HITECH Act, the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) recently referenced use of Consolidated CDA as a proposed requirement for Stage 2 meaningful use of EHR systems. The potential ruling has accelerated efforts toward adoption of Consolidated CDA and the resulting need for testing to validate CDA content with IHE integration profiles at the IHE Connectathon.

The Connectathon will be held in Chicago from Jan. 28 - Feb. 2, 2013, at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

In January 2012, the IHE North American Connectathon reached record-breaking participation, with more than 120 participating organizations testing more than 150 systems to advance the health IT industry and patient safety.

“We produce over a billion clinical documents in the U.S. each year – it’s a tremendous source of clinical information that is underutilized in current computer-based record systems,” said Joy Kuhl, executive director, Health Story Project.  “Having information from clinical documents available in a CDA-structured format will make it easier for providers to participate in quality reporting, improvement, research and other activities.”

“Offering Consolidated CDA testing with Health Story at the 2013 Connectathon will help vendors prepare for upcoming meaningful use Stage 2 and certification testing,” said Joyce Sensmeier, president, IHE USA.  “We are pleased to collaborate with Health Story to bring this testing opportunity to the industry.”

The Health Story Project was founded four years ago by the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity (AHDI), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Clinical Documentation Industry Association, Lantana Consulting Group, and M*Modal. It is now a collaborative of more than two dozen healthcare vendors, providers and associations.

The Health Story vision is for complete patient stories to be available in electronic medical records.