Health
information exchange (HIE) refers to confidential and secure
information sharing among healthcare institutions. The HIEs are governed by
Health Information Organizations (HIOs) which are in quest to create a
standardized model that ensure HIE’s confidentiality and security. Like EHR,
Healthcare information exchange will evolve over time before it gets its final
form. It may not ever get its final form as healthcare technology is ever
evolving. Further advancements will keep on adding features to the standardized
healthcare information exchange model. One may say that the final model of HIE
will be all the way patient centric, reliable, scalable, and sustainable.
In an article “The
value of health care information exchange and interoperability”, Walker J
and colleagues discussed the value of HIEs between providers and
independent laboratories and public health departments. Through a cost benefit
model, they empirically proved net value of dollar 77.8 billion per year upon
implementation of standardized HIEs. The non-standardized HIEs also proved to
offer positive monetary benefits. HIEs implementation is a compelling and
beneficial project that should be pursued to reform healthcare industry.
 |
| Fig. Health Information Exchange - Connectivity, Integration & Interoperability |
Reference:
