Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The Indian Health Service Interoperability Plan

As part of the Greater Boston Beacon Community Grant resubmission, the grant collaborators worked with the DOD/VA and Indian Health Service to ensure we could seamlessly exchange data required for care coordination and population health. Developing the plan required that we understood the interoperability strategy of the DOD/VA and Indian Health Service.

Today I'll focus on the Indian Health Service.

Here's a strategic overview of the IHS interoperability plan provided by IHS CTO Mike Danielson.

The architecture follows the NHIN Exchange approach using NHIN Connect software. Interactions with IHS will be "pulls" and "pushes" using XDS.b

IHS hopes to have widescale production use of their interoperability infrastructure by the end of 2011.

At the moment, they are watching the NHIN Direct project with great interest. Presumably, since the NHIN Direct effort will plug into the NHIN Exchange effort, small provider offices will be able to post clinical records to IHS via NHIN Direct. The strategy will become clearer as NHIN Direct evolves.

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