Going to the Doctors just got easier!
A group of health IT vendors who make up a high percentage of the electronic health records are launching a CommonWell Health Alliance designed to increase sharing and interoperability among their systems. This announcement was made at the annual HIMSS conference in Orlando.
This new alliance, designed to achieve data liquidity amongst member firms will define, promote and certify a national infrastructure with common platforms and policies. This will make going to the doctor less painful if he/she has a solution which is part of the member alliance.
Participating in this new CommonWell alliance are Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, athenahealth, Greenway and RelayHealth. Combined, these vendors make up 41% of the hospital EHR market and about 23% of the ambulatory care EHR market.
Looking to attract all the players in the electronic healthcare records industry, the alliance wants the entire industry to work together to promote better healthcare across the country.
Working together, this alliance can break down barriers between systems and improve healthcare while optimizing the value of those systems to the medical community. This alliance is just one more, although giant step forward to eliminating obstacles that exist between vendors and ultimately will help your doctor take better care of you.
The alliance plans to start testing the following services within the next year:
- Cross-entity patient linking and matching services
- Patient consent and data access management
- Patient record locator and directed query services regarding patient encounters
What do you think about having your healthcare records shared amongst vendors and your doctor, specialists and even hospital staff? Is it a step in the right direction?
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