Three regional health information organizations serving 13 million New York state residents and three health data exchange vendors have agreed to participate in the Statewide Health Information Network of New York, called SHIN-NY, Health Data Management reports (Goedert, Health Data Management, 6/11).
Participating RHIOs
The participating RHIOs are:
- Brooklyn Health Information Exchange;
- eHealth Network of Long Island; and
- Taconic Health Information Network and Community.
Participating Vendors
The three participating health information exchange vendors are:
How the Network Will Operate
Initially, SHIN-NY will allow health care providers to use a patient record lookup function similar to an Internet search engine to scan the network for health records relevant to their patients.
SHIN-NY eventually plans to launch direct exchange capabilities that would allow health care providers to query each other as they collaborate on patient care (Byers, CMIO, 6/6).
Officials said that the network will reduce the amount of time and resources that health care providers spend gathering disparate patient health histories from other clinicians. They also noted that the exchange could help reduce the number of duplicate tests ordered.
Paul Grundy, director of health care transformation at IBM, said that SHIN-NY -- which is coordinated by the New York eHealth Collaborative -- could serve as a model for the rest of the U.S. (Healthcare IT News, 6/7).