McKesson Corp. is developing an interoperability platform that leverages fast healthcare interoperability resources in an effort to move providers toward value-based payment models.
The Intelligence Hub platform will initially simplify connections between several of McKesson's own software products. But the company aims to ease links to multiple applications, even those it doesn't develop, as the healthcare system moves toward value-based purchasing.
The various applications could be “called” through the platform and behave as “services” instead of stand-alone applications connected with one-off interfaces, making adding and connecting new applications easier, said Michael Wood, chief technical officer at McKesson Health Solutions, the San Francisco-based company's health IT division.
The platform could also run on a health plan customer's own computers, Wood said, with the aim of offering a third-party cloud version in the future.
“We have some of the capabilities of the Intelligence Hub in play now,” Wood said. Most should be interoperable in the next two to six months with a cloud version possible in next 12 to 18 months, he said.
No stranger to clinical and business systems interoperability, McKesson is a founding member of the CommonWell Health Alliance health information exchange initiative, and is actively engaged in developing fast healthcare interoperability resources, or FHIR, and the implementation initiative for FHIR, the Argonaut Project. FHIR are standards for healthcare information exchange developed by Health Level Seven.
FHIR can be used for clinical records but is less proficient in financial transactions and even less mature around a health plan, Wood said. McKesson, however, is making “a huge push” in adapting its software systems to FHIR.
McKesson also owns RelayHealth, a health information exchange and claims clearinghouse service provider.
McKesson's health plan software, ClaimsXten, checks an estimated 60% of all commercial health insurance claims, according to the company.
Wood declined to mention those customers that are helping it develop the platform.
