MOSS Gives Medical Data-Sharing a Dose of Open Source

New software from Misys Open Source Solutions (MOSS) promises to provide what could be the world's first fully open source, standards-based platform for exchanging health information.

The Misys Connect Exchange software was demonstrated and successfully tested last week in Chicago at IHE Connectathon, the healthcare industry's weeklong interoperability testing event.

The result, MOSS said, will represent the first time all the software needed to exchange electronic files in a healthcare community will be made freely available in open source.
'Meaningful Use' Requirements

"Today is the realization of a complex two-year development project," said Tim Elwell, vice president of MOSS.

Providers can only meet government "meaningful use" requirements if they can electronically exchange patient information across the community with "cross-enterprise user assertion," Elwell added. "The MOSS release will enable that exchange at a much lower price point."

Funding and collaboration on the effort came from Hartford Hospital.
A Week of Testing

IHE, or Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise, is an initiative by healthcare professionals and industry to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information.

Toward that end, IHE Connectathons give participating vendors an opportunity test their technologies' ability to exchange information with complementary systems from other vendors.

In the test of the new Misys software, Connectathon examination monitors reviewed and passed two core server-side components that help to give an exchange operator the ability to identify a patient uniquely and exchange that patient's clinical information across disparate systems. Such systems could include hospitals, provider offices, labs and diagnostic centers in a community, MOSS explained.

Any record that has been requested is then tracked for auditing purposes, MOSS said. In addition, the resulting health information exchange can be implemented in a centralized or decentralized way, depending on the specific requirements of the community, it noted.