Epic, athenahealth, other EHR vendors sign on for Carequality Interoperability Framework

Epic, athenahealth, other EHR vendors sign on for Carequality Interoperability Framework

EHR heavy-hitters to be first class of vendors to implement data exchange principles set by The Sequoia Project.

Barely a month after its launch, the Carequality Interoperability Framework devised by The Sequoia Project has already signed up five health IT heavy-hitters to be the first to implement its data exchange principles: athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Epic, NextGen Healthcare and Surescripts.

The vendors – at least two of whom have verbally sparred in recent years over their willingness to play ball with interoperability – have agreed to provide health information exchange services for their customers under the Carequality Framework: legal terms, policies, technical specs and processes meant to enable another step forward for nationwide health information exchange.

Sequoia Project officials say provider clients of these early implementers – who will first focus on query-based exchange of clinical documents, eventually expanding to other use cases – will benefit from faster, less expensive data sharing agreements, because they no longer need to develop one-off legal agreements between individual partners.

“The adoption of the Carequality Framework represents a major leap forward for nationwide interoperability,” said Dave Cassel, director of Carequality. “By these organizations committing to unified Rules of the Road, they are simplifying system-to-system connections to make data exchange easier for a significant portion of the healthcare ecosystem.”

Earlier this year, Epic offered Congressional testimony about another interoperability group, the CommonWell Health Alliance, questioning its membership fees and contractual practices.

Continue reading >>>