WASHINGTON, DC — January 1, 2014 — Helping patients make their medical records more portable so they can coordinate their care online across multiple providers is the goal of an innovative pilot project currently involving three states, five health information organizations, and three personal health record (PHR) companies.

The project, underway in California, Alaska and Oregon, is working to overcome physicians' concern that so-called "patient mediated exchange" may not be complete or accurate. It is aimed at ensuring that providers can successfully transfer medical data into a patient-controlled PHR, and that other physicians on the patient's care team can trust information sent to them from the patient's PHR.

"Putting the patient in charge of their data can expedite data exchange," Aaron Seib, CEO of the National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) said. "People have a right to their medical record and a right to disclose it to whomever they choose." According to Seib, complying with HIPAA rules and other policies that enable medical organizations to electronically exchange data is simplified when the choice to disclose data is in the patients' hands.

"Clinicians are looking for safe and secure methods to share electronic data with patients — especially those who want to transmit their information to a PHR," said James Killeen, MD, chief technical architect of the San Diego Health Information Exchange, a project participant. Killeen noted that being able to communicate with patients online is required for physicians to receive incentive payments under a federal program aimed at encouraging providers to adopt electronic health records.

The project is on a fast track. "In just over 30 days we brought together a broad group of stakeholders and rapidly developed a baseline approach that balances easy consumer access to data with the privacy and security safeguards necessary for trusted exchange," Seib said. "In the next phase, we want to engage additional PHR vendors and health care and health information exchange organizations to continue working on the baseline and update it with lessons learned."

Currently the pilot includes the following organizations and activities:

• Humetrix is working with San Diego Health Connect and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to transmit HIE and VA medical data to its iBlueButton mobile application. Veterans receiving care from VA or San Diego health care providers can receive and manage health records from different providers on their mobile device.
• The Santa Cruz HIE is working with provider organizations to deploy the NoMoreClipboard patient portal so they can exchange demographic and clinical data. The project will also build infrastructure for an HIE-wide patient portal.
• The University of California San Diego and San Diego Health Connect are collaborating with Microsoft HealthVault to provide asthma patients with environmental data, including air quality and weather information.
• The Alaska eHealth Network (AeHN) is collaborating with HealthVault and private providers to send Continuity of Care Documents (CCD) records to their patients' HealthVault accounts, and with the Department of Veterans Affairs to send CCD records to VA providers that their patients have received from VA outsourced providers using patients' HealthVault accounts.
• In Oregon, CareAccord® is facilitating online exchange of clinical health information between the parents of chronically ill children and their pediatric patient-centered primary care home. Using the patients' free HealthVault account, parents can receive and send messages to providers without using disparate messaging systems.

---

About NATE
The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) is a not-for-profit focused on health information exchange whose membership is open to the HIE Programs of all states and territories of the U.S. This NATE pilot is coordinated in part by the State Health Policy Consortium, managed by RTI International and funded by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, as part of the PHR Ignite consortium project. For more information, visit www.nate-trust.org

About NoMoreClipboard
NoMoreClipboard, a wholly owned subsidiary of Medical Informatics Engineering (MIE), is a web-based, Personal Health Record management system designed to consolidate medical information in one convenient and secure location for easy retrieval and updates. NMC enables consumers to share personal or family member medical information with medical professionals electronically, reducing the need for repetitive medical paperwork. For more information, visit www.NoMoreClipboard.com