Ensuring High Availability, Performance, Security, and Scalability for the Leading Nationwide Public Health Data Exchange

eHealth Exchange, the largest health information network in the United States, uses InterSystems solutions to power its massively scalable eHealth Exchange Hub data platform. InterSystems cloud-hosted managed service offerings help eHealth Exchange accelerate time-to-value and ensure outstanding performance and availability for its nationwide data-sharing network.

eHealth Exchange facilitates over 21 billion secure transactions a year and is known as the network of choice for public health and the federal government. It provides connectivity for 60 regional and state health information exchanges (HIEs), 75% of U.S. hospitals and health systems, 6 TEFCA national health information networks, 70,000 medical groups, 85% of dialysis centres, payers in 34 states, as well as countless urgent care centres, surgery centres, and clinical laboratories. Public health agencies nationwide, as well as five federal agencies, rely on eHealth Exchange to share patient information with private-sector partners and among each other. eHealth Exchange also connects to 35+ national health information networks via Carequality.

eHealth Exchange is one of the inaugural electronic data-sharing networks in the country to be designated as a Qualified Health Information Network™ (QHIN™) under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement™ (TEFCA™). Created under the 21st Century Cures Act, TEFCA establishes a universal governance, policy, and technical foundation for nationwide interoperability. eHealth Exchange stands apart from other designated and approved-candidate QHINs as the only network that connects healthcare providers to five different federal agencies and supports the routing of electronic case reports (eCRs) to public health agencies in all 50 states.

eHealth Exchange connects federal agencies and non-federal healthcare organisations throughout the United States. The network dramatically improves patient care and public health by ensuring tens of thousands of organisations with disparate systems can share vital medical data—quickly, reliably, and securely.

A hub-and-spoke architecture lets eHealth Exchange participants exchange patient data via a single connection, a single set of APIs, and one trust agreement for ultimate convenience, ease-of-deployment, and economics.

Since 2019, eHealth Exchange has relied on a number of InterSystems solutions including InterSystems IRIS for Health™ and InterSystems HealthShare™ to power eHealth Exchange Hub, the centrepiece of its electronic data-sharing network. InterSystems solutions help eHealth Exchange efficiently connect diverse networks and entities, and reliably exchange data at high scale with ultra-low latency.

InterSystems cloud-based, fully managed solutions help eHealth Exchange accelerate time-to-market for new use cases, avoid upfront capital equipment expenditures, and tightly align ongoing expenses with evolving business requirements. The solutions make it easy for healthcare organisations to get connected and become TEFCA-compliant.

“With InterSystems we can support new data exchange use cases quickly and cost-effectively to help our members expand information sharing and keep pace with change,” explains Jay Nakashima, President at eHealth Exchange. “InterSystems helps us reduce operations expense and complexity, and free up technical resources to focus on more strategic tasks.”

InterSystems solutions support every healthcare data standard, including HL7® FHIR®. They help eHealth Exchange optimize system performance and availability, and lay the foundation for emerging FHIR projects. The eHealth Exchange Hub underpins a variety of innovative public health data exchange applications including a FHIR-based adverse events monitoring application, an automated electronic case reporting application, and a nationwide disaster preparedness and response application.

eHealth Exchange Hub is the cornerstone of the U.S. FDA Biologics Effectiveness and Safety (BEST) exchange platform, one of the first national-scale, FHIR-based public health exchanges in the world. Live in 46 states, the platform handles millions of FHIR R4 transactions annually for the FDA’s adverse events reporting program. The AI-based program automates inefficient manual processes and provides more robust monitoring of adverse events, while minimising the burden on providers.

The BEST platform supports two distinct adverse event use cases: a “push scenario” to intelligently detect and validate adverse event cases and report them to the FDA via eHealth Exchange; and a “pull scenario” to automatically gather patient data from provider EHR systems for validation purposes by the FDA.

eHealth Exchange participants can automatically send eCRs to appropriate local, state, and national public health agencies via eHealth Exchange’s partnership with the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL), an eHealth Exchange participant. Many participants started leveraging the solution to report COVID-19 cases at the onset of the pandemic. Today, providers can automatically share over 80+reportable diseases via eHealth Exchange.

The Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) is a nationwide health IT disaster response platform deployed at the city, county, or state level to authenticate and empower volunteer clinicians at disaster sites. With an eHealth Exchange connection, authorized volunteers in makeshift “pop-up” clinics and elsewhere can use PULSE to retrieve patient medical records and make well-informed decisions.

InterSystems helps eHealth Exchange provide fast, reliable, and secure data exchanges nationwide. The QHIN-designated network works tirelessly to advance interoperability through new use cases to serve the public good, enhance workflows, and reduce administrative burdens. With these efficiencies, eHealth Exchange is transforming care and improving outcomes.

eHealth Exchange is using InterSystems solutions to streamline information sharing for value-based care and to operationalize the HL7 Da Vinci Project, including a hub-and-spoke model for electronic prior authorization and clinical data exchange (CDEX).