Verizon Business has announced an expansion of its
Medical Data Exchange Web platform to incorporate a larger variety of
data, more providers and a new name for its exchange consortium.
Since the exchange was first launched in March,
Verizon has allowed for dictated notes to be shared from
transcriptionist to physician and from physician to physician. Now the
company has expanded the exchange to allow medical professionals to
share X-rays and lab results. With the loosening of criteria for data
sharing, more health care providers are able to share EHRs (electronic
health records).
With the expansion unveiled Oct. 14, providers
will also now include large health systems, rural hospitals and small
physician practices, according to Verizon. All providers are screened
and meet HIPAA security requirements.
With the expansion of the types of records that
can be shared as well as the increased variation in the types of
providers participating, Verizon has changed the name of the Medical
Transcription Service Consortium to the Medical Data Exchange
Consortium.
ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon Business, manages the consortium in a neutral role.
According to Verizon, these efforts move the company further toward meaningful use of EHRs
and interoperability among data platforms and providers, both
requirements for health care companies to qualify for federal stimulus
funds under HITECH (the 2009 Health Information Technology for Economic
and Clinical Health Act).
Verizon says the expansion of the exchange and
easier sharing of digital records will lead to faster patient
diagnoses, increase productivity for health care facilities and boost
cost efficiency for providers.
Among the companies Verizon is collaborating with
on the exchange is MD-IT, a firm that offers medical documentation
software, an EMR (electronic medical record) platform
and medical transcription. MD-IT provides input to Verizon on the
development of the exchange from a software standpoint, according to
Robin Daigh, MD-IT's vice president of marketing and business
development.
"The exchange is helping us in a really simple-to-use way to address meaningful use for our clients," Daigh told eWEEK.
According to Steve Archer, senior manager of
Verizon's Innovation Incubator Group, the challenge for the company in
expanding the data exchange was to determine how to move beyond fax and
snail mail exchange to digital. "When this was first put out, the first
users of the data exchange were primarily medical transcription service
organizations, the initial users on the exchange," Archer told
eWEEK.
Daigh notes the importance of the text documents
no longer getting reduced to images. "It replaces fax and eliminates a
need to create interfaces with each of the different provider solutions
out there on the vendors' side," Daigh explained.
Among the new members joining the exchange are
Alert Notification, an emergency communication and health records
provider, and Amaji, a firm that provides digital clinical
documentation services.
Verizon has also signed up Tolven, an open-source health informatics software company, and NLP International, a provider of NLP (natural language processing) applications.
Meanwhile, Verizon will provide IT consulting
services to help providers use the exchange. "We offer different types
of toolkits to get people on the exchange," Ardi Kazarian, senior
product manager for Verizon's Medical Data Exchange, told eWEEK. "We
have a .NET, a Java and a Ruby [toolkit], We have professional services
that can help with the toolkit and walk you through different things."
Daigh explained how Verizon's data exchange works
well for MD-IT. "You can participate if you have an EMR or if you
don't, or with straight client-based system or straight Web-based
system, as long as you can have Internet access," Daigh said. "I really
like that element of it," she continued. "It doesn't require everybody
to be in lockstep fashion. We can move forward at different rates and
move health information electronically."
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