NwHIN Trial Implementations

Building upon the work in the Prototype Architectures, in September 2007, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded contracts totaling $22.5 million to nine health information exchanges (HIEs) to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN), with an additional six grants totaling $600,000 added in April 2008.

This collective set of information exchanges, including providers, and several Federal agencies, worked together as the NHIN Cooperative to securely exchange data including summary patient records for providers and patients. This connection of Health Information Exchanges is another key step in building a “network of networks,” the NHIN. The NHIN trial implementations leveraged the ongoing work throughout HHS and its contractors and partners, including: the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP), the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT), the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration (HISPC) and the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics (NCVHS).

Click here to view NHIN Trial Implementations Deliverables

The NHIN Cooperative participants include:

CareSpark
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Community Health Information Collaborative
Delaware Health Information Network
Department of Defense
HealthBridge
HealthLINC (Bloomington Hospital)
Indian Health Service
Indiana University (Regenstrief Institute)
Kaiser Permanente
Long Beach Network for Health
Lovelace Clinic Foundation
MedVirginia
National Cancer Institute
New York eHealth Collaborative
North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communications Alliance, Inc.
Social Security Administration
Veterans Administration
West Virginia Health Information Network
Wright State University

Together, these organizations collaborated and achieved consensus to specify, build, and test demonstrate a core set of capabilities to enable basic exchange of health information between the different HIE networks, patients, and other stakeholders.

Core Capabilities:

Ability to look up, retrieve and securely exchange health information
Ability to apply consumer preferences for sharing information
Ability to apply and use the NHIN for other business capabilities as authorized by the health care consumer

The NHIN Cooperative continued its work to agree to specifications, test and demonstrate seven breakthrough use cases in December 2008, as recommended by the AHIC and accepted by the Secretary.

Major Milestones:

June 2007 - A request for proposals for Trial Implementations was posted.
September 28, 2007 - ONC awarded contracts to 9 health information exchanges (HIEs) to begin trial implementations of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN).
April 2008 - ONC awarded grants to six organizations to join the NHIN Cooperative.
August 2008 - NHIN Cooperative completed testing of core capabilities to support the NHIN.
September 23, 2008 – ONC and NHIN Cooperative presented the NHIN core capabilities to the AHIC.
December 2008 – Demonstrated core capabilities and use cases at the NHIN Forum in Washington, DC (Press Release)

In February 2009, the NHIN Cooperative work products (including interface and data specifications, testing materials, and trust agreements) were placed in the public domain to stimulate adoption.

These Trial Implementations deliverables can be found via the Resources Page.