Exchanging healthcare data is often a complicated, difficult process. And as more unconventional sources of patient information – like wearables and mobile testing sites – emerge, it’s even more challenging to paint a complete picture of a patient’s health. That’s why the need for organizations like health information exchanges (HIEs), which help aggregate information and streamline interoperability in healthcare, is growing.
HIEs help collect and organize the data that is critical to a variety of downstream use cases – such as healthcare data analytics or ensuring quality reporting. As Deanna Towne, Chief Information Officer at Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) explains, HIEs are, “the pipes that help exchange data across various systems…the power comes from having the data from all of the different sources.”
Indeed, CORHIO and other HIEs have no shortage of information sources. They must work with hospitals, lab and imaging centers, and public health departments to collect the following kinds of medical documentation, to name a few:
- Physician notes
- Operative reports
- Pathology reports
- Laboratory results
- Immunization records
- Newborn screenings
- Reportable or traced conditions (like COVID-19)
- Care summary documents
And with HIEs serving as the data aggregation point for this information, leveraging a normalization solution rooted in clinical terminology can set a foundation for healthcare data standardization and data quality in healthcare.
Want to know more about how HIEs can use a normalization solution to help make exchanging and using healthcare data a more streamlined process? Watch our on-demand webinar, Tackling lab data normalization: An HIE case study to hear Deanna Towne and Matt Cardwell, IMO’s Vice President of Client Services, dive deep into the topic.
