Not many health information exchanges can say they handled a papal visit, but that’s exactly what HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania did.

Hundreds of thousands of people converged in Philadelphia when Pope Francis visited the city in late September of 2015, filling local hotels, clogging public transit and drawing scores of international tourists for the World Meeting of Families conference and Papal Mass.

Pope Francis’ final stop of his three-city tour went by without any major incident. But had some sort of emergency situation actually unfolded, HSX was there, ready and willing to help.

See all of our HIMSS16 previews

The HIE’s work up to that point had centered on collecting and disseminating specific information, such as real-time encounter notifications, from hospitals across a five-county region representing the largest and most densely populated healthcare marketplace in Pennsylvania.

The HIE has the goal of connecting 15,000 providers representing 100 percent of practitioners and 90 percent of hospitals in greater Philadelphia, as well as community health centers, City of Philadelphia health clinics, and participating health plans – all by the end of 2016, according to HSX executive director Martin Lupinetti.

It was during preparations for Pope Francis’ visit that HSX came to realize the byproduct of that work put it in what Lupinetti described as “a pretty good position to continue using that information for other purposes.”

Lupinetti will talk more about this precedent-setting initiative and other HIE applications during the HIMSS16 session “International Exchange and Crisis Support: New Roles for HIEs.”

One example: family reunification during a crisis event where a large number of patients needed to receive emergency hospital services in order to help next-of-kin identify where a relative was receiving care. Or to quickly provide physicians with clinical information about foreign travelers who end up in a local healthcare facility.

The Pope’s visit, in fact, prompted the realization of a significant milestone in terms of international exchange of patient medical information.

“We had a successful test,” Lupinetti explained. “The groundwork has been laid to exchange continuity of care documents between countries.”

The test involved HSX simulating requests for patient information from its member hospitals via its IT vendor Mirth, directing requests to prominent Italian interoperability vendor Dedalus and to HIE vendor Forcare — which returned simulated patient health information to be made available to Philadelphia area hospitals.

[Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook]

To be sure, HSX sees this and its other developing services applicable to both routine and crisis situations.

“This was also important for us to do because we are using the same technical approach to pilot bidirectional global exchange with our partners in Rome and Toronto that we will use to connect to other HIEs in Pennsylvania, and to the national eHealth Exchange, over the Pennsylvania Patient and Provider Network,” Lupinetti said at the time.

The session, “International Exchange and Crisis Support: New Roles for HIEs,” is scheduled for March 3 from 1 to 2 p.m. at HIMSS16 in the Sands Expo Convention Center room Lando 4205.

Twitter: @HealthITNews