Washington, DC (PRWEB) May 01, 2014
DirectTrust, a non-profit trade alliance that advances secure, health information exchange (HIE) via the Direct Protocol, announced that it has expanded its trusted, national network to include 26 Direct exchange health information service providers (HISPs), and began large-scale interoperability testing to ensure continued reliability. These HISPs now provide Direct exchange services to more than 5,000 health care organizations – including medical practices, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and laboratories – with nearly 200,000 individual Direct accounts and addresses nationwide.
“This network’s growth – more than 20-fold in nine months – has exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations,” DirectTrust President and CEO David C. Kibbe, MD, said. “Meaningful use is only meaningful to the extent that health data and information can follow the patient from one clinical setting to another – securely. Now, virtually any physician or hospital in the country can use their DirectTrust-accredited EHR's exchange services to connect to other physicians and hospitals on the network.”
DirectTrust members abide by “Direct exchange”: strict privacy, security, and trust-in-identity controls that ensure messages and attachments sent over the Internet remain encrypted end-to-end, and that senders and receivers are identity-validated. Used within electronic health record (EHR) software, this empowers providers and hospitals to communicate with HIPAA-compliance across organizational boundaries and proprietary software platforms. It also qualifies them for the federal government’s 2014 meaningful-use incentive programs.
Extensive HISP-to-HISP testing is underway to help ensure the growing network’s ongoing reliability. Spearheading the interoperability efforts is the co-chairman of the DirectTrust Security and Trust Compliance workgroup, Luis C. Maas III, MD, Ph.D. He is also the CTO of EMR Direct and a practicing radiologist. According to Maas:
"Participating HISPs are true innovators and pioneers in using Direct to exchange health information. They are not only actively collaborating to ensure that the technical infrastructure runs smoothly for every user, but are also benefitting from the network-wide validation of privacy and security practices under the DirectTrust/EHNAC DTAAP accreditation program.”
The initiative is known as the Transitional Trust Anchor Bundle. Participating HISPs currently include:
Cerner, Inpriva, ICA, Surescripts, MedAllies, Axesson, Updox, MRO, IOD, Secure Exchange Solutions, Covisint, RelayHealth, San Diego Health Connect, Orion Health, AthenaHealth, HealtheConnections RHIO of CNY, MaxMD, CareAccord, NextGen Share, Healthcare Information Xchange of NY, DataMotion, MiHIN, Infomedtrix, EMR Direct, Medicity, HealthUnity
DirectTrust has been supported in part by a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health IT as part of the Exemplar HIE Governance Program. Most recently, the organization also earned a two-year Cooperative Agreement from the ONC.
Details on the Transitional Trust Anchor Bundle can be found at http://www.DirectTrust.org/trust-bundles/.
About DirectTrust
DirectTrust is a nonprofit, competitively neutral, self-regulatory entity created by and for participants in the Direct community – including health information service providers (HISPs), certificate authorities, registration authorities, doctors, patients, and vendors. It supports both provider-to-provider, as well as patient-to-provider Direct exchange. The goal of DirectTrust is to develop, promote and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices needed to maintain security and trust within the Direct network, consistent with the HITECH Act and the governance rules for the NwHIN established by the ONC. DirectTrust is committed to fostering widespread public confidence in the Direct exchange of health information. To learn more, please visit http://www.DirectTrust.org.