Health Information Exchange Networking – The Direct Project

The ONC’s Direct Project comes down to nationwide accessibility and a simple way to connect each little practice’s EHR with other EHRs, registeries and software.  It will/could facilitate:

The ONC’s Direct Project comes down to nationwide accessibility and a simple way to connect each little practice’s EHR with other EHRs, registeries and software.  It will/could facilitate:

• HIEs connecting with individual practices
• practices connecting with practices
• practices connecting with agencies for reporting
• HIEs connecting with other HIEs
• HIEs connecting to agencies for reporting
• connecting with portals, labs, pharmacies, remote monitoring devices, telehealth and others
• connections across the continuim of care to link long-term, home and other care sites
• PHRs linking to provider EHRs.

The Direct Project Wiki includes recordings of overview presentations, information from the Direct Bootcamp and resources.  Basically, it involves:

• providers to request an account; being authenticated as a provider and then being given an address.
• They can connect with others who have been given an address (think back to Fax machines when we needed our referral sources to have Faxes too before we could send anything to them).
• EHR vendors are helping with the establishment and updating of directories and sets a trigger point to send information.
• Pushes information out when trigger point is reached (based upon the patients pre-established consent for sharing information)
• a message using simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP) and attachments that are multipurpose Internet mail extensions (MIME)
• The message is discrete data that can move into the receiving provider’s EHR.

We will start seeing this technology used more and more to facilitate connections and ultimately longitudinal health.  It is an especially useful tool for rural communities and small networks and also presents opportunities for exploring applications with telemedicine.

For the very latest update, visit the CAeHC webinar archive.