And then there was one.
The announcement last week that major electronic health-record vendor Meditech is joining the burgeoning CommonWell Health Alliance information-exchange network now leaves Epic Systems Corp. as the only company among the sector's top five vendors that doesn't belong to the barely 2-year-old group.
CommonWell's participating vendors now serve over 70% of acute-care facilities and 20% of ambulatory facilities, said Jitin Asnaani, the group's executive director.
Questions about why Epic is not involved surfaced almost from CommonWell's beginnings in 2013. At the time, Epic CEO Judith Faulkner quipped that Epic simply had not been asked to join.
Faulkner, commenting on the latest development via e-mail, said Epic's customers are interested in connecting to all the various health information networks. She touted the efforts of Carequality, an organization working toward that goal.
“If CommonWell becomes successful, it should be able to connect via Carequality,” she wrote.
“I do see a world where networks do connect to each other,” Asnaani replied.
Besides Meditech, other prominent participants in CommonWell include Cerner Corp. and Athenahealth, among 25 vendor members.
