HMS Successfully Demonstrates Full Interoperability

January 21, 2010

Healthcare Management Systems (HMS), the health information technology answer for community hospitals, successfully completed 100 percent of its defined goals at the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) North American Connectathon event in Chicago last week.

“We successfully tested critical IHE profiles needed to run a health information exchange,” said Jeff Givens, product manager for interoperability at HMS. “During the five-day Connectathon, systems exchanged information with complementary systems from multiple vendors, performing all of the transactions required for the roles selected, in support of defined clinical-use cases.”

The IHE Connectathon is the North American healthcare IT industry's largest interoperability testing event. Companies participated in a variety of tests to determine how well their systems conform to IHE integration profiles and share patient information with complementary systems. HMS demonstrated interoperability with all healthcare IT vendors with which it exchanged information with during tests in which it was involved.

IHE is an initiative by the healthcare industry and its professionals to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information. It promotes the coordinated use of established standards to address specific clinical needs in support of optimal patient care. Systems developed in accordance with IHE communicate better, are easier to implement, and enable care providers to use information more effectively.

“The Connectathon is a great way to demonstrate our interoperability,” said Givens. “HMS is the enterprise-wide technology solution for more than 600 community hospitals nationwide. Our interoperability is a key strength as our customers move toward achieving meaningful use and actively exchange information with other providers in their communities.

The vendors with which HMS successfully demonstrated interoperability included Alert, Metavante, CPSI, Siemens, Athena, Corepoint Health, Nextgen, Karos, Misys, IBM, GE, Spirit, Oracle, Sage, Karos, Allscripts, eMDs, Medquist, EMC, EBMtech, MIE, Microsoft, CareEvolution, QuadraMed2 and Initiate.

HMS also will participate in the interoperability showcase at HIMSS 2010 March 1-4 in Atlanta.

About HMS
Based in Nashville, Tenn., Healthcare Management Systems, Inc. (HMS) develops, sells and supports a full range of healthcare technology products that combines clinical, financial and patient access information. Founded in 1984, HMS currently serves 650 community hospitals; behavioral, rehabilitation and long-term acute care facilities; and multi-entity healthcare organizations nationwide. Visit www.hmstn.com for more information.

About IHE
IHE (www.ihe.net) is a global initiative, now in its ninth year, that creates the framework for passing vital health information seamlessly – from application to application, system to system, and setting to setting – across multiple healthcare enterprises. IHE brings together health information technology stakeholders to implement standards for communicating patient information efficiently throughout and among healthcare enterprises by developing a framework of interoperability. Because of its proven process of collaboration, demonstration and real world implementation of interoperable solutions, IHE is in a unique position to significantly accelerate the process for defining, testing, and implementing standards-based interoperability among electronic health record systems.

Eve Hutcherson
615.383.7300