HealthInfoNet
16 Association Drive
P.O. Box 360
Manchester, ME 04351
info@hinfonet.org
An interconnected, secure data sharing network of healthcare providers, public health professionals, consumers, payers, and affiliated services would permit rapid access to patient-specific healthcare data at the point of care and across networks, hospital systems and state lines.
An integrated clinical information system of this kind will maximize the effectiveness of available technology to provide accurate, secure, and current clinical and administrative health care data to points of care and to sites of approved data analysis.
Health care leaders from across all sectors in the state took part in the project's 2004 Phase I Feasibility Study and currently are supporting an intensive Phase II Planning and Development Process.
The OrganizationHealthInfoNet is an independent, nonprofit organization currently housed at the Maine Health Information Center (MHIC), an independent nonprofit health data research organization based in Manchester, Maine. The MHIC focuses on providing healthcare data services (health services research, database management, and survey coordination) to a wide range of clients in Maine and other states. Its mission is to promote informed decision making by designing, managing, and analyzing timely, high quality, integrated healthcare databases.
In early 2006, a new, permanent organization named HealthInfoNet was formed to oversee the development of the statewide electronic clinical information sharing network. HealthInfoNet is governed by a nineteen member Board of Directors made up of physicians, health care executives, consumers, employers and government and public health officials.
Maine's statewide HealthInfoNet project is occurring in four distinct phases:
In late 2004, under the guidance of Medical and CIO work groups and a Provider Advisory Committee,
the following tasks were completed in Phase I:
During Phase I an extraordinarily high level of support was secured. For example, CEOs of 34 of Maine's 36 acute care hospitals signed letters of support, as did the leadership of the Maine Medical Association, the Maine Hospital Association and other groups. Physician leaders and senior information technology executives reviewed system architecture requirements and priorities and develop a short list of potential statewide systems that are now being further explored.
The Phase I feasibility study found that there is now rapid growth taking place across the state in health IT systems, including electronic medical records. However, the study verified that this development is occurring independently at the local and hospital-system levels. Until the project began, little had been done to explore how patient-specific clinical data can be quickly and efficiently shared with providers outside the local community or across systems and state lines. Before the project began, there was no mechanism in place to monitor and coordinate any collaboration among these traditional institutional silos of patient medical record information.
What's Happening Today?Maine began its Phase II Planning & Development period in mid-2005. Building on the work completed during Phase I, the HealthInfoNet project is laying critical groundwork for first stage implementation in Maine in 2007. This ambitious timeline requires an intense, highly coordinated effort over the next 12 months to initiate the first steps toward statewide HealthInfoNet implementation.
These key questions are now being answered through the Phase II process:
The HealthInfoNet project is closely aligned with Maine's public health community to ensure a high degree of coordination with public health surveillance and bio-terrorism reporting initiatives that are now under way. In addition, discussions are now taking place to determine how the HealthInfoNet system can help address Maine's critical shortage of clinicians by establishing systems that allow practitioners to devote more time to patient care and less time to administrative requirements. Medical educators in Maine are beginning to explore how the use of new clinical information sharing systems can be built into their curricula.
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