CHIME and DirectTrust Announce Collaboration

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and DirectTrust recently announced they are collaborating to promote the universal deployment of the DirectTrust framework and health information exchange network as the common electronic interface for health information exchange across the United States.

CHIME is the leading professional association for health care CIOs, with more than 2,400 members across all 50 states in the United States as well as 47 other countries. DirectTrust is a health care industry alliance created by and for participants in the Direct exchange network used for secure, interoperable exchange of personal health information between provider organizations, and between provider and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.

CHIME and DirectTrust are working together to promote and ensure that secure, interoperable exchange of health care information via Direct exchange is available and able to be used at every location in the health care system where a patient's data and information might be needed. This will include making Direct exchange universally available at hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, labs, long term care facilities, payers, insurers, and health departments, as well as on applications. 

DirectTrust's network is the largest standards-based network for the exchange of health information, with more than 1.5 million send and receive endpoints, at over 100,000 health care organizations, via more than 350 ONC-certified EHRs.

"Our members strongly support the further development of a standards-based national platform to safely and securely exchange patient data," says CHIME CEO and President Russell P. Branzell. "DirectTrust offers an infrastructure that goes hand in hand with our goals to assist and lead where needed to improve patient care, engage patients in their health, and reduce patient safety incidents. The National Patient ID Challenge, which we launched to accurately and safely identify patients no matter what the health care setting, is a perfect example of these needs that require a strong national exchange infrastructure. Having these two elements in place will go far toward offering high-quality, timely patient care anytime, anywhere in the US. We look forward to working with DirectTrust to make this a reality."

"We are thrilled to be working with such a strong leader in CHIME and its membership of experienced health IT professionals. There is great potential in our new collaboration to further standardize and simplify health information exchange interfaces on a national basis for an expanded variety of use cases," says DirectTrust CEO and President David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA. "The value of a simple and secure means of exchange that can be relied upon everywhere for the exchange of health data and information is a necessary step forward in attaining the goals of national health IT interoperability consistent with existing national policy."

"As CIOs, we constantly are assessing what gaps need to be filled to meet current and future technological demands in our health systems," says CHIME Board Chair Liz Johnson, CIO of Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corporation. "We welcome the opportunity to add our perspective as these exchange networks mature and expand nationally."

Source: College of Healthcare Information Management Executives