Covisint and Carefx partner to market an integrated workflow solution for health information exchange

Addressing the burgeoning demand for health information exchange (HIE) to coordinate and better leverage patient information, two health IT industry leaders - Covisint, a subsidiary of Compuware Corporation, and Carefx - have partnered to market an integrated workflow solution that ties together the full spectrum of care, from physician offices to labs and pharmacies, to multiple information systems within hospitals.

Announced at the Healthcare IT Summit being held in La Quinta, CA, Nov. 8-10, the new Covisint-Carefx partnership brings together Covisint's cloud-based collaboration platform, which connects physicians to patient information and healthcare applications in a secure web-based environment, with Carefx's Fusionfx, an interoperable workflow solution for hospitals and health systems that streamlines the way clinicians interact with patient data, reducing errors and increasing productivity. By using technologies that close the information gaps between providers, venues and information systems, clinicians can provide patients with a more consistent, higher quality care experience.

"The combined Covisint and Carefx solution will significantly improve healthcare delivery by covering all facets of the patient care spectrum," said Brett Furst, Vice President of Healthcare for Covisint. "Covisint and Carefx are committed to shaping the future of healthcare with solutions serving the entire care continuum. Together, this relationship leverages innovation in a way that improves complete access to patient information to ensure quality of care, while driving down costs."

"Leveraging the technology innovation of our two companies provides the ability to present information that draws on a patient's encounters with multiple practitioners. With public attention focused on quality of care, this collaboration is more important than ever," said Andrew Hurd, Chairman and CEO of Carefx.

Covisint's readily available secure platform and cloud-computing approach features a community-based portal framework, identity management, single sign-on, master patient index, record-locator service and secure messaging between physician offices and other healthcare entities. Fusionfx, from Carefx, enhances clinical workflows by offering clinicians real-time, unified views of relevant in-patient and imaging data across multiple applications. Clinicians who must often navigate multiple applications from many different hospital facilities and systems can access synchronized patient data because of Fusionfx's skillful integration of those applications into a customized portal.

Leveraging this combined platform enables healthcare communities and organizations to securely:

• Access and share a wide variety of administrative and clinical information, including the ability to manage order and results delivery, e-prescribing, and integration with most ambulatory EMR (electronic medical record) and PM (practice management) systems.

• Deliver community-wide single sign-on (SSO) access to all external applications and services via AppCloud(TM), Covisint's secure marketplace of healthcare applications that are accessed by a physician practice or hospital. AppCloud leverages Covisint's federation capabilities and includes patient-centric management, enabling navigation across multiple, disparate applications.

• Enable the dynamic aggregation of community-based patient information into patient-centric dashboard views in one centralized location for providers and physicians.

The Covisint-Carefx partnership comes at a critical time. The HIT Policy Committee of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has identified data capture and sharing by 2011 as one of three phases for achieving meaningful use of health information technology, along with advanced clinical processes by 2013 and improved outcomes by 2015.

But sharing healthcare data is fraught with problems. Clinicians in a community or service area work with multiple EHR systems which typically do not communicate with each other. The data fragmentation continues as separate systems for physician offices, clinics, imaging centers, commercial labs and retail pharmacies are introduced to the mix. Hospitals and medical centers often house dozens of systems and harbor concerns about the economic, technical and legal consequences of sharing information with other, nonaffiliated entities.

The Covisint-Carefx partnership directly addresses the data sharing requirement for achieving meaningful use by tying together multiple information systems through customized portals that synchronize patient information across every point of care.

The Covisint-Carefx solution is also likely to generate greater interest in HIE development and participation. A 2009 survey from the non-profit eHealth Initiative (eHI) reported that the electronic exchange of health information between physicians, hospitals, health plans and patients had increased 40 percent since 2008, with gains seen in cost management and care provided by physician practices.

Health information exchanges will transform healthcare, as every player on the healthcare scene -- physicians, other clinicians, hospitals, ancillary providers, health plans, governments -- accesses tools and applications to share information in real-time.