Usage of Health Information Exchange (HIE) Technologies

New York State has awarded grants to several regional health information exchange organizations (RHIOs), organizations established to create the technical and policy infrastructure needed to exchange health data between providers, payers, and public health agencies within a particular geographic region, to build an interoperable system for people to manage their own health information. Two of these grant recipients are the Brooklyn Health Information Exchange (BHIX) and Long Island Patient Information Xchange (LIPIX).

Since no off-the shelf technology currently exists to create such a system, BHIX is working with a commercial vendor to develop a unique system that is tailored toward the needs of their consumers and providers, while LIPIX is developing their own unique system in-house. Both BHIX's and LIPIX's interoperable personal health management systems will offer various features to consumers and providers in their community. Consumers may be able to perform tasks such as viewing their lab results, scheduling an appointment, or sending a message directly to their physician through a SMS. Conversely, the PHR can also allow physicians to engage in communications with their patient, release data to their patient(s) (e.g. lab test result); and view patient inputted-data.

The usage patterns of these personal health managements systems is not well understood (Ralson et al., 2009; Kim et al., 2007). Understanding consumers and providers' use of these interoperable systems can help aid in improving current systems and developing future systems.

Specific Aims

The specific aims of this study are to describe the usage of BHIX's and LIPIX's novel interoperable personal health management systems, specifically:

1. To quantify adoption of and frequency of use of novel technological platforms designed to give consumers (patients) access to RHIO-based health information exchange (HIE) data;
2. To quantify usage of HIE-specific data elements within these platforms;
3. To explore associations between usage and user demographics/clinical characteristics;
4. To explore trends in usage over time.