NHIN Direct launched at HIMSS10;
Simpler data exchange for physicians and consumers
Office of National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT launched NHIN Direct Wiki and blog at HIMSS10 in Atlanta on March 1, 2010. NHIN Direct is being led by Arien Malec, most recently with RelayHealth, who started formally with ONC on March 1, 2010.
Arien Malec
The remainder of this post (and Malec’s head shot) were pulled from NHIN Direct Web site Wiki and blog on March 4, 2010.
“NHIN Direct is the set of standards, policies and services that enable simple, secure transport of health information between authorized care providers. NHIN Direct enables standards-based health information exchange in support of core Stage 1 Meaningful Use measures, including communication of summary care records, referrals, discharge summaries and other clinical documents in support of continuity of care and medication reconciliation, and communication of laboratory results to providers.”
NHIN Direct Process Wiki
NHIN Direct Web site and Wiki “collects the User Stories and Specifications and Service Descriptions for the NHIN Direct project. Once collected and organized, these stories, specifications and service descriptions will then serve as the basis for exploratory implementation work and pilot projects. The objective is to have pilot projects demonstrating simple, direct exchange during 2010, leading to widespread adoption by 2011. See the Overall Process page for more details.”
NHIN Direct
NHIN FAQ
NHIN Direct Blog
Why NHIN Direct?
“There is a need to extend the NHIN to support a broader set of participants and providers through a simple, standards-based, widely deployed and well-supported method for providers to securely transport health information using the Internet in support of the core Meaningful Use outcomes and measures.”
What is the relationship between NHIN Direct and the currently descrived NHIN Architecture?
In short, “NHIN Direct and the current NHIN model support different use cases and are coequal in a system of robust nationwide health information exchange.”
“The currently described NHIN Architecture (see the NHIN Inventory of Tools for more detail) describes a method for universal patient lookup and document discovery and exchange between National Health Information Organizations, including Federal providers such as the Veterans Health Administration, Department of Defense Military Health System, RHIOs, and large IDNs . NHIN Direct supports cases of pushed communication between providers, hospitals, laboratories, and other health settings of care.
The current members of the NHIN Collaborative will be able to support the NHIN Direct model, and providers and enabling organizations for NHIN Direct will scale to support to support the discovery and exchange use cases. Both models are required and will be in use at the same time for the same participants, depending on the information exchange needs.”
