An HIE Linking a RHIO to Public Health, Washington State style

This presentation will focus on the steps being taken to build a Health Information Exchange (HIE) linking Public Health Washington State (partners directly working on this project are Washington Department of Health and Spokane Regional Health District) and the consortium of hospitals in the Inland Northwest Health Services (INHS) regional health information organization located in eastern Washington. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) is the lead contractor that Public Health and INHS will be working with on this project. This work is being funded by one of three contracts awarded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to build a Health Information Exchange. The topics covered in this discussion will include a description of the information systems in place, operational and in use by Public Health Washington State. There will be presentation of the approach and technical solutions that will be utilized and built to connect the Inland Northwest Health Services member hospitals to the HIE. The technical details will include the installation and use of the transport mechanism developed by CDC, the Public Health Information Network Messaging System (PHIN MS), implementation of HL7 version 2.5.1 messages, the Minimum Data Set (MDS) identified by the American Health Information Community (AHIC) Biosurveillance Workgroup for multi-jurisdictional biosurveillance programs, and standard vocabularies to implement standards based data exchange. The project is focused on building the connection between INHS and Washington State Public Health, with focus on is presentation on the steps being taken to bring all of the systems together, along with the successes and challenges realized to date.