IT heavyweights announce joint effort

Five major health information technology companies have announced the launch of the CommonWell Health Alliance, a not-for-profit corporation to create a shared, centralized standards-based platform for patient and provider identification and authorization, and information exchange.

The five participants thus far are Allscripts, Athenahealth, Cerner Corp., Greenway Medical Technologies and McKesson Corp., according to a news release issued Monday at the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society convention in New Orleans.

The alliance will create a centralized record locator service to identify which participating providers have records in their electronic health-record systems for specific patients as well as create a system for “simple patient-centered management of data-sharing consents and authorizations,” the statement said.

“This alliance provides a framework that will enable patient identification and record-sharing for providers across the nation. This is good for care providers, for patients and for the country,” said Allscripts President and CEO Paul Black, in the statement.

“At the highest level, what we're hoping to accomplish with this is commoditization of the patient identification and authentication” process, said Kyle Armbrester, director of business development Athenahealth, in an interview. “We're still fierce competitors, but we want to take this off the table.”

The proposed network will facilitate peer-to-peer record sharing of patients' summaries using the federally developed Direct protocol, but “all kinds of records could be accessed,” Armbrester said.

The participants plan to pilot-test the proposed system for 12 to 18 months, he said, then roll out the system to participants. No pilot sites have been selected, Armbrester said. The budget for the project also is not being disclosed, but all members “have contributed large amounts of money” to launch the project, he said. “We're going to put capital and resources behind this.”

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