HHS awards $22.5M in NHIN contracts

Last week, HHS has awarded $22.5 million in contracts to nine HIEs to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). HHS awarded contracts to CareSpark, which serves Eastern Tennessee and Southwestern Virginia, Delaware Health Information Network, Indiana University, Long Beach (CA) Network for Health, Lovelace Clinic Foundation, MedVirginia, New York eHealth Collaborative, North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance and West Virginia Health Information Network.

The groups chosen are working together as part of the NHIN Cooperative to test and demonstrate the exchange of private health information security between providers, patients and other relevant parties (presumably employers and employer groups in large part). The groups, which will share results in September 2008, will make their specs and related testing materials publicly available.

To find out more about the contracts:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece

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