National Association for Trusted Exchange: Patient Mediated Exchange Demonstrated at HIMSS14

At this year’s HIMSS Annual Conference, the National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) will join the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) and the Federal Health Architecture (FHA) in the Interoperability Showcase, offering demonstrations of real-world scenarios in which patients use Personal Health Records (PHRs) and Direct messaging to communicate with healthcare providers in a scalable and trustworthy way, empowering them to be in control of their health information.

“There is no more important partner than the patient in providing quality healthcare.  The National Association for Trusted Exchange is excited to be leading a team of amazing organizations that are making it safe and easy for patients to control their own information exchange,” said NATE CEO Aaron Seib.  “And we’re not just helping to make patients’ lives easier.  For providers, complying with HIPAA rules and other policies is simplified when the choice to disclose data is in the patients’ hands.”

A not-for-profit organization emerging from the ONC-supported Western States Consortium pilot project, NATE brings the expertise of state programs together to find common solutions that optimize the appropriate exchange of health information for greater gains in adoption and outcomes.  Consistent with NATE’s mission to address the legal, policy, and technical barriers that inhibit health information exchange between entities within a state and across states, NATE’s HIMSS14 demonstrations are grounded in the use of NATE’s Trust Framework and are examples of NATE’s recent PHR Ignite Project.

“Through the State Health Policy Consortium, we have been able to build new functionalities on top of exchange capabilities enabled through the State HIE Program.  The PHR Ignite Project and the rapid development of the National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) are concrete evidence of the desire to take relatively simple tools and build dynamic, scalable platforms to improve healthcare.  The leadership and vision of our states as laboratories and the partnerships they form is the key to solving the long-term challenges ahead,” said Lee Stevens, Policy Director, ONC State HIE Program.

At HIMSS14, NATE has partnered with health information exchange organizations (HIEs) located in three states and participating providers to demonstrate a wide spectrum of scenarios, including showing how patients and rural providers can utilize Direct messaging to relay protected health information via a patient controlled PHR; how patients can collect information through wearable devices and communicate the results to their physicians, thereby helping manage their chronic conditions; how patient mediated exchange can help bring information from across different provider systems to give one comprehensive view of the patient’s care; and how trust bundles can be used to establish bidirectional trusted exchange between providers and patient PHRs, improving the flow of data to where the patient needs it to be without requiring a practice to manage multiple disclosures and related authorizations.

Specifically, NATE will demonstrate four scenarios enabled by its Trust Framework:

1)      Easing the Administrative Burden on Providers

2)      Wireless Science Leveraging Micro and Macro Environmental Data

3)      Ensuring Patient Safety with Mobile Anytime/Anywhere Access to Health Records

4)      Leveraging RESTful content via Direct

Organizations participating in NATE’s demonstrations include Alaska eHealth Network (AeHN), CareAccord, Humetrix, Microsoft HealthVault, NoMoreClipboard, San Diego Health Connect, Santa Cruz Health Information Exchange, University of California San Diego Medical Center, the U.S. Army Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

“As our work with NATE demonstrates, providing patients easy access to their health information via Direct is not only achievable, but it can be done practically, rapidly and affordably,” said NoMoreClipboard president Jeff Donnell. “All of the stakeholders in this demonstration worked together to develop policies for PHR participation in a trust community, and we are showcasing that work at HIMSS and in production.”

“NATE helps us enable trusted exchange and is critical as organizations steer toward higher levels of integration and clinical functionality which are key to better patient outcomes,” said Bill Beighe, CIO of Santa Cruz Health Information Exchange.

“Humetrix is delighted to be participating in the Interoperability Showcase with the ONC, NATE, San Diego Health Connect, UCSD and the Veterans Administration, and will be conducting live demonstrations of iBlueButton 5.0’s new features that highlight the power of its real time interoperability play across EMRs, HIEs or Blue Button records right on the user’s mobile device,” said Dr. Bettina Experton, CEO of Humetrix.

“Empowering consumers to control and securely share their personal health information with their personal physicians is incredibly important to improving their outcomes and experience of care,” said Dennis Schmuland, Chief Health Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft HealthVault and NATE make it possible for patients’ data to be shared in a reliable and secure manner.”

“San Diego Health Connect is so excited to be part of this project extending the continuum of care to the patient, which really completes the process of getting information into the hands of the people that need it most,” said Dan Chavez, Executive Director, San Diego Health Connect.

NATE’s demonstrations will be located in the ONC/FHA Area of the Interoperability Showcase.  Demonstrations will be available from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm ET on Monday, February 24, from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm ET on Tuesday, February 25, and from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on Wednesday, February 26, 2014.

Additional information on the NATE demonstrations is available at nate-trust.org/himss14 or by contacting NATE CTO Rim Cothren, PhD at Robert.cothren@nate-trust.org.

About National Association for Trusted Exchange

The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) brings the expertise of state programs together to find common solutions that optimize the appropriate exchange of health information for greater gains in adoption and outcomes.  Emerging from the Western States Consortium, a pilot project supported by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), NATE was established as a not-for-profit organization incorporated in Washington, D.C. on May 1, 2013.  Consistent with NATE’s mission to address the legal, policy, and technical barriers that inhibit health information exchange between entities within a state and across states, NATE participates in a number of ongoing and emerging projects in the HIE domain.


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