CHIME and DirectTrust Announce Collaboration

Leading Organizations Will Work Together to Promote Universal Deployment of Direct Exchange as Common Interface for Health Information Exchange

ANN ARBOR, MI, and WASHINGTON, DC, Aug. 30, 2017 – The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and DirectTrust today announced they are collaborating to promote the universal deployment of the DirectTrust framework and health information exchange network as the common electronic interface for health information exchange across the U.S.

CHIME is the leading professional association for healthcare CIOs, with more than 2,400 members across all 50 states in the U.S. as well as 47 other countries. DirectTrust is a healthcare industry alliance created by and for participants in the Direct exchange network used for secure, interoperable exchange of personal health information between provider organizations, and between provider and patients, for the purpose of improved coordination of care.

CHIME and DirectTrust are working together to promote and ensure that secure, interoperable exchange of healthcare information via Direct exchange is available and able to be used at every location in the healthcare system where a patient’s data and information might be needed. This will include making Direct exchange universally available at hospitals, medical practices, pharmacies, labs, long-term care facilities, payers, insurers and health departments as well as on applications.

DirectTrust’s network is the largest standards-based network for the exchange of health information, with more than 1.5 million send and receive endpoints, at over 100,000 healthcare organizations, via more than 350 ONC-certified EHRs.

“Our members strongly support the further development of a standards-based national platform to safely and securely exchange patient data,” said CHIME CEO and President Russell P. Branzell. “DirectTrust offers an infrastructure that goes hand in hand with our goals to assist and lead where needed to improve patient care, engage patients in their health and reduce patient safety incidents. The National Patient ID Challenge, which we launched to accurately and safely identify patients no matter what the healthcare setting, is a perfect example of these needs that require a strong national exchange infrastructure. Having these two elements in place will go far toward offering high-quality, timely patient care anytime, anywhere in the U.S. We look forward to working with DirectTrust to make this a reality.”

“We are thrilled to be working with such a strong leader in CHIME and its membership of experienced health IT professionals. There is great potential in our new collaboration to further standardize and simplify health information exchange interfaces on a national basis for an expanded variety of use cases,” said DirectTrust CEO and President David C. Kibbe, MD, MBA. “The value of a simple and secure means of exchange that can be relied upon everywhere for the exchange of health data and information is a necessary step forward in attaining the goals of national health IT interoperability consistent with existing national policy.”

“As CIOs, we constantly are assessing what gaps need to be filled to meet current and future technological demands in our health systems,” said CHIME Board Chair Liz Johnson, CIO of Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corporation. “We welcome the opportunity to add our perspective as these exchange networks mature and expand nationally.”

About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendor partners and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.

About DirectTrust
DirectTrust is a five-year old, non-profit, vendor neutral, self-regulatory entity initially created by and for participants in the Direct community, including Health Internet Service Providers (HISPs), Certificate Authorities (CAs), Registration Authorities (RAs), doctors, patients and vendors, and supports both provider-to-provider as well as patient-to-provider Direct exchange. In the period 2013 to 2015, DirectTrust was the recipient of a Cooperative Agreement Award from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) as part of the Exemplar HIE Governance Program. DirectTrust serves as a forum and governance body for persons and entities engaged in the Direct exchange of electronic health information as part of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). DirectTrust’s Security and Trust Framework is the basis for the voluntary accreditation of service providers implementing Direct health information exchange. The goal of DirectTrust is to develop, promote, and, as necessary, help enforce the rules and best practices necessary to maintain security and trust within the Direct community, consistent with the HITECH Act and the governance rules for the NwHIN established by ONC. DirectTrust is committed to fostering widespread public confidence in the interoperable exchange of health information. To learn more, visit www.directtrust.org.

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