PatientKeeper Demos Medical System InteroperabilityPatientKeeper Demos Medical System Interoperability

PatientKeeper has demonstrated standards-based interoperability of medical systems, showing progress toward the ultimate goal of a unified view of patient health information that would span hospitals, clinics, and doctors' offices.

The physician information technology company held its demo at Connectathon in Chicago, the healthcare IT industry's largest interoperability testing event. The week-long event last month brought together 104 vendors to conduct scenario-based tests that mimic data exchanges among disparate medical systems.

During Connectathon, experts reviewed and verified the PatientKeeper exchange platform's support for healthcare standards for audit trail and node authentication, consistent time, patient demographic query, cross-enterprise document sharing, and content consumer. The demo showed the effectiveness of the technology for exchanging patient health information between physician practices, laboratories, and other community providers.

In general, the healthcare industry is moving, albeit slowly, to a time when all healthcare systems in the field can identify patients and exchange clinical information, based on patents' consent.

"The Connectathon provides a great test environment for validating our approach to meeting our clients' interoperability needs," Paul Brient, president of PatientKeeper, said in a statement released Tuesday.

The next interoperability showcase will occur in early March at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in Atlanta.

While vendors are moving quickly in developing interoperability between systems, adoption within the healthcare industry is slow. Only about four in 10 doctor offices, for example, are using e-health records either partially or fully, according'>http://www.information.com/news/healthcare/EMR/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222300536">according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey of 5,200 physicians also found that physicians in larger practices are more likely to have e-medical/e-health record systems.

In an attempt to quicken adoption, Congress has approved more than $20 billion in health IT stimulus programs through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.