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EHR vendor alliance seeks to advance health data exchange
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted March 18, 2013
Six major electronic health record vendors have formed a nonprofit alliance aimed at advancing the capability for patient data exchange among health care organizations regardless of EHR vendor.
The formation of the CommonWell Health Alliance was announced March 4 at the annual meeting of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in New Orleans. The alliance will work toward establishing a common platform in which patient data can be shared among multiple care sites and will create a certification program for systems that meet certain standards. The platform will allow physicians and health care organizations to locate patient records through a query system and, with authorization, receive and share those records.
The alliance’s founding members are Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, Athenahealth, Greenway Medical Technologies and RelayHealth. The alliance is open to any EHR vendor that wants to join.
