Physician offices in Ohio and Mississippi became the first in the U.S. to exchange health information using a new set of secure messaging standards.
Officials hailed the milestone as another step toward a day when Americans’ health records will be easily accessible to physicians anywhere in the nation, Information Week reported.
Doctors in Lima, Ohio and Biloxi, Mississippi shared the data via each state’s health information exchange (HIE), secure networks that allow for moving clinical information between disparate systems.
“No more faxing, phone calls, mail delivery and couriers,” said the top official with Ohio’s HIE. “Health information exchanges across states will save time, money and lives all across the country.”
The exchange between the physicians was done using a new set of secure messaging standards called Direct Project, which enables the transport of encrypted emails containing health information between healthcare organizations, such as physicians, hospitals and labs.
The standards have been used to send health information within the same state for nearly a year, but the Ohio-Mississippi exchange marks the first time the standard has been used to share health data across state lines.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Photo from flickr user Jamison_Judd
