Portability Standards for PHRs Under Development
A recent collaboration formed by America’s Health Insurance Plans, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, and Health Level Seven (HL7) will develop portability standards for personal health records. An announcement about signature of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for this effort was released by the organizations.
The goal of the collaboration is to facilitate the process for portability of data between health insurance plans to provide health plan members with the opportunity to move their personal health data in the event that there is a change in their health insurance coverage.
This effort will create the groundwork for standards-based interoperability between PHRs between providers and consumers. PHRs include an array of data, including claims and administrative data from the health insurers and health information entered by patients themselves.
HL7 has been charged with the responsibility of maintaining the standards. Early next year, the organization plans to release a model for the PHR standards. This will serve as a template for participants to evaluate over the following two years while the standards are refined.
AHIP states that an individual patient’s health record is the foundation to connect those patients with their healthcare providers. Facilitating means to share this information will improve patient care.
December 12, 2007 Related topics: Privacy, Partnerships & Consortia