information organizations news from FierceHealthIT

The CDC has awarded $38 million in contracts to help health information exchanges and regional health information organizations to create data sharing plans used to deliver information to public Read more...

Regional health information organizations have their place--and at least some are success stories. But RHIOs still struggle to protect patient privacy, determine data ownership and keep themselves afloat financially, says Cerner's David McCallie, M.D. McCallie is arguing for the creation of "health record banks," neutral intermediaries which maintain data but have no other stake in the game. Editorial

There's been considerable debate about what's the best network architecture for RHIOs (regional health information organizations), including whether it should be centralized or decentralized. PhD Steve Beller argues that the best approach is a federated "node-to-node mesh" architecture because it can incorporate all other architectures. Among other reasons, it meets RHIO business needs including maximum reliability, low cost, unlimited scalability and greater robustness because it doesn't …

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States are showing signs of life when it comes to promoting regional health information organizations and other health data exchanges, according to preliminary results of a 165-program survey. Washington-based eHealth Initiative, an advocacy group, surveyed health data exchange programs in 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. It found that twenty-four states have enacted legislation to facilitate data exchange initiatives, such as forming a task force to study issues or …

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