Ohio, Mississippi doctors share health information exchange milestone

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.

 

 

Photo from flickr user Jamison_Judd