IBM recently introduced Initiate Exchange, a new service that enables health systems to exchange patient data with physicians.

The news comes on the day that IBM completed its acquisition of Initiate Systems. The acquisition was driven by IBM's desire to enhance its ability to help healthcare clients draw on data from hospitals, doctors' offices and payers to create a single, trusted shareable view of millions individual patient records.

Connecting Healthcare Providers for Intelligent Information Sharing Widespread adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) is anticipated with the availability of stimulus funds set aside through the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). According to the legislation, healthcare providers seeking funds must be "meaningfully using health information technology, such as through the reporting of quality measures."

While EMRs are essential to improving care and reducing costs, EMRs alone will not meet the requirements of meaningful use and more specifically, will not improve the quality of care and reduce costs. A gap remains in the ability to connect healthcare participants for effective sharing of health information.

Initiate Exchange helps bridge this gap by enabling health systems to rapidly connect participants for community wide information sharing. Using Initiate's software as a service delivery model, physicians can quickly achieve their information sharing objectives without the cost and time associated with internal development or additional computing infrastructure. The offering gives health systems the flexibility to say "yes" to community physicians seeking to work more closely with the health system.

By offering services that enable physicians to issue orders, access test results and share registration information right from their EMR or practice management system, Initiate Exchange gives health systems a competitive advantage and helps physicians meet meaningful use requirements.

At the core of Initiate Exchange is Initiate's industry leading patient and provider matching logic which makes the solution unique from competitive offerings by helping to ensure the right information is associated with the right patient at the point of care regardless of location.

"This SaaS model from Initiate allows us to support our mission of improving the health of our communities by being able to quickly connect our physician community while giving us the flexibility to expand the scope at our own pace," said Jeff Allport, vice president, IT Solutions Delivery, St. Joseph Health System.

SOURCE: IBM Introduces Initiate Exchange