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LANSING, Michigan– Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) has adopted openAirWare software that enables MiHIN health plan partners to securely and easily communicate with one another throughout Michigan.

The software offers a newly designed real-time conversion from any Consolidated Clinical Document Architecture (C-CDA) to standards accepted by the American National Standards Institute for electronic data exchange. This enables health plans to obtain up-to-date claim status and related responses, including All Payer Supplemental Health Care Claims.

The software also allows for core information from the C-CDA to be studied in conjunction with the Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS). HEDIS is a tool used by health plans to measure performance on important dimensions of care and service measures to better analyze data and be prepared for electronic clinical quality measure reporting.

"The national electronic data interchange standards enable highly secure and reliable communication between our health plan partners" said Marty Woodruff, MiHIN associate executive director. "We selected openAirWare because of its high level of excellence and unparalleled expertise in interoperability Together, we continue to improve communication for our partners and demonstrate proven interoperability for all of healthcare."

"We are pleased to offer this solution to MiHIN and their partners," said Mark Brown, openAirWare CEO. "This functionality, similar to what we offer commercially, further strengthens interoperability between organizations." As part of our Alchemy libraries, we deliver multiple, real-time, all-inclusive interface data converters.

"Organizations under Meaningful Use must share and analyze clinical data whenever they need to report clinical quality measures in a standard and structured format for interoperability between systems, including HEDIS and others," he added. "Our solution applies consummate know-how in standards, connectivity and interoperability to give organizations the data they need, in the right format, whenever they need it."

About openAirWare, LLC With over 20 years in state-of-the-art healthcare solutions, openAirWare, formerly RelWare®, continues to solve complex issues that allow entities to easily access, analyze and securely share clinical data with all partners. Its unmatched expertise in HL7, Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) and healthcare data ensures trusted solutions for healthcare providers and their most important assets. Learn more at www.openairware.com.

About Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is Michigan's state-designated entity to improve healthcare quality, efficiency, and patient safety by sharing electronic health information statewide and helping reduce costs for patients, providers, and payers. MiHIN is a non-profit, public-private collaboration that includes stakeholders from the State of Michigan, Health Information Exchanges serving Michigan, health systems and providers, health plans/payers, pharmacies, and the Governor's Health Information Technology Commission. For more information visit www.mihin.org.

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LANSING, Michigan– Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) has enhanced the secure transmission of healthcare communications using Direct Secure Messaging with openAirWare LLC.

In early 2018, MiHIN became a fully accredited health information service provider through openAirWare and now has the ability for providers and patients to exchange protected health information through MiHIN's service, Diretto.

Diretto enables patients, providers, specialists, health plans, pharmacists, hospital, and others to securely send and receive protected health information. It also satisfies Meaningful Use criteria and allows information to be exchanged within the user's region, state or nationally.

"We were looking for a partner to implement strict standards, but also be able to manage the solution," said Marty Woodruff, MiHIN associate executive director. "openAirWare exceeded our expectations in contributing to an encrypted national standard that ensures highly sensitive health information can be securely sent and received from provider to provider, provider to patient, or patient to provider."

MiHIN chose to partner with openAirWare in 2016, based on their proven expertise in the Continuity of Care Document and Clinical Document Architectures.

"openAirWare is proud to partner with MiHIN and to contribute to the development of this solution," said Mark Brown, openAirWare CEO. "They selected us for our high level of excellence and unparalleled expertise in connectivity and interoperability solutions. Together, we will set the bar for improved communications."

For additional information on Diretto, visit https://mihin.org/services/diretto/ or to schedule a demo of the service, send an email to Maureen.John@mihin.com.

About openAirWare LLC
With over 20 years' experience in state-of-the-art healthcare solutions, openAirWare, formerly known as RelWare®, continues to readily solve complex issues and allow entities to securely share and view a complete patient record. With unmatched understanding of HL7, Clinical Document Architecture (CCD-A) and healthcare data, the expertise shown in openAirWare's design of the successful Social Security Administration's E-Disability Claims Filing system endures. openAirWare is an expert in HIT solutions for enterprises and their most important assets, providers and patients. Find your solutions at www.openairware.com.

About Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN)
Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is Michigan's state-designated entity to improve health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety by sharing electronic health information statewide and helping reduce costs for patients, providers, and payers. MiHIN is a non-profit, public-private collaboration that includes stakeholders from the State of Michigan, Health Information Exchanges serving Michigan, health systems and providers, health plans/payers, pharmacies, and the Governor's Health Information Technology Commission. For more information visit www.mihin.org.

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FARMINGTON HILLS, Michigan– openAirWare has released its suite of Health Data Conversion Services as a product service offering, named Alchemy, which the company announced at HIMSS 2018.

Alchemy is middleware that interfaces with your existing systems. Whether your organization receives HL7 messages, CCD, CDA or C-CDA Documents, FHIR Bundles, or custom data formats, Alchemy will take them and parse out the discrete data and restructure it in any manner you need.

Having all of the data elements at its command, Alchemy formats, structures stores or utilizes data however you need. Alchemy can create standardized CCDs, FHIR bundles, SQL inserts, spreadsheets proprietary formats, or leverage its LEET Data-Aware Applications.

Alchemy easily integrates with your existing architecture, through a MIRTH or similar Interface Engine Channel, via our REST API, or by embedding our .Net Library directly into your custom application. Any way you need it, your conversion is just a call away.

When asked of the benefits Alchemy brings to its users, Mark Brown, CEO of openAirWare shared this insight: "Many organizations receive CCDs and CDAs from different sources, and just need them to conform to a single spec.
Many have partners that require submissions be provided in a specific file format.
Others have existing applications expecting data as custom XML.
Some have Data Analysts that just want the data human readable, like in a spreadsheet.
Alchemy does all of this real-time, and turns your data into gold."

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CARMEL, Indiana– Clinical Architecture, the leading provider of healthcare terminology management solutions, and openAirWare (oAW), a health IT connectivity solutions provider, have partnered to enable more sophisticated data sharing through advanced integration tooling.

oAW’s innovative plug-and-play technology captures patient information from standard clinical information exchange formats like HL7, CCD/CDA, and FHIR, and readies that data for use in Clinical Architecture’s Advanced Clinical Awareness Suite for inferencing. This unique toolset allows EHRs, HIE’s, and CDR’s, capable of generating these formats, to quickly and easily take advantage of the Advanced Clinical Awareness Suite to improve patient care. The Advanced Clinical Awareness Suite, a module within the Symedical terminology management platform, normalizes and analyzes disparate patient data and evaluates that data against dynamic data-driven rules to enable providers to better assess patient conditions, target at-risk populations, mitigate risks, lower costs, and ultimately deliver improved outcomes.

"We are excited, through the work we are doing with openAirWare, to be able to provide a turnkey solution that provides immediate benefit to our customers without adding to the already full plates of their development teams", said Charlie Harp, Clinical Architecture Chief Executive Officer. "Being able to ingest patient information from messaging formats already in use in the industry for the interoperable exchange of clinical information about a patient eases the implementation burden for healthcare organizations who want to use the Advanced Clinical Awareness Suite to provide their clinicians with access to unparalleled insights at the point of care."

The ability to accept industry standard messaging allows clinical and administrative information to quickly be turned into high-fidelity coded data that can be leveraged by organizations to help meet a variety of Meaningful Use, MACRA, eCQM and Pay-for-Performance measures.

"Organizations now have a hub to plug in to that makes their clinical data and workflows instantly more useful and actionable," notes Mark Brown, CEO of openAirWare. "Because this solution applies standard medical terminology against episodic information, customers have quick access to clinical data they can use for improved data sharing and better outcomes for their patients."

To learn more about openAirWare and the full suite terminology management solutions available from Clinical Architecture, visit us at www.clinicalarchitecture.com.

About openAirWare
As they celebrate over twenty years of state-of-the-art healthcare solutions, openAirWare continues to readily solve complex issues and allow entities to securely share and have access to a complete patient record across a continuum of care. With an unmatched understanding of HL7, Clinical Document Architecture (CCD/CDA) and healthcare data, their proficiency shown in the Social Security Administration's E-Disability Claims Filing endures. Find your solutions at www.openairware.com.

About Clinical Architecture
Clinical Architecture is a healthcare IT solutions provider. We develop software focused on the quality and usability of clinical information. We believe improving the quality and efficacy of clinical information will have a profound effect on care delivery, healthcare costs and overall outcomes. We set out to create solutions to address industry gaps in content acquisition, terminology management, interoperability, decision support and analytics. Informative discussions on a variety of health information technology topics are available at the company’s Healthcare IT Blog. For more information, please visit www.ClinicalArchitecture.com/Blog. Symedical is a registered trademark of Clinical Architecture, LLC.

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EAST LANSING, Michigan – Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) maintains its position as a leader in data exchange with efforts of Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) national experts, openAirWare. openAirWare recently developed MiHIN’s intelligent CCD/CDA parser that interprets and transforms a wide range of CDA messages allowing the extraction of specific information such as medications.

"This intuitive middleware provides faster integration of data from CCD or CDA sources and allows MiHIN to pull key data out of large CCD/CDA documents so that only the data needed for a particular use case is shared," said Jeff Livesay, Associate Director, MiHIN. "This capability increases the value of vital use cases like medication reconciliation. It uses proven standards that simplify seamless sharing of data, allowing us to quickly and easily assess, validate and integrate new source systems."

"Additionally, we can pull data out of CCD/CDA documents and put the data into FHIR resources. We are heavily committed to FHIR and this very advanced, state-of-the-art parser developed for us by openAirWare will accelerate our FHIR efforts."

MiHIN was attracted to openAirWare's proven expertise as seen in their medication reconciliation work and comprehensive population health and EMR applications. "Years of innovation keep us at the forefront of healthcare," acknowledges openAirWare CEO Mark Brown. "Our expertise continues to support the State of Michigan as a national leader in the exchange of health information and data sharing. We tackle the toughest initiatives to ensure the advancement of HIT across the U.S."

About openAirWare, LLC
openAirWare creates solutions that allow entities to share and view medical data more completely and securely, and have done so for over twenty years. With an unmatched understanding of HL7, Clinical Document Architecture and healthcare data, their expertise was well demonstrated with their success in the Social Security Administration's E-Disability Claims Filing. They are experts in HIT solutions for Enterprises and their most important assets, providers and patients.

About Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN)
The Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is Michigan's state-designated entity to improve health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety by sharing electronic health information statewide, helping reduce costs for patients, providers, and payers. MiHIN is a non-profit, public-private collaboration that includes stakeholders from the State of Michigan, Health Information Exchanges that serve Michigan, health systems and providers, health plans/payers, pharmacies, and the Governor's Health Information Technology Commission. For more information visit www.MiHIN.org.

ANN ARBOR, Michigan - The South East Michigan Health Information Exchange (SEMHIE) announced today that it has officially completed all milestones under its multi-million dollar contract to provide its E-Disability Claim Filing Service to the U.S. Government's Social Security Administration (SSA). The infrastructure of this health information exchange can provide the basis for creating a comprehensive health information exchange for Southeast Michigan in the future.

Under this contract, SEMHIE has automated the process of filing Social Security disability insurance claims in the Detroit Metro Region, accelerating the process from an average of 457 days by paper to 6 hours electronically. SEMHIE's service automatically pulls health records and creates a comprehensive set of medical information that populates a Continuity of Care Document (CCD). Once the CCD is sent to SSA over the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN) of which SEMHIE is an approved member, decisions on these claims are being made by SSA, providing disabled citizens financial support on a much more timely basis and bringing increased federal dollars to the Detroit area. SEMHIE has been informed by SSA that it has met all key Milestones under the contract for its E-Disability Claim Filing Service. SEMHIE's service is in full production and since June 1st has processed 5% of all claims as required by the final milestone of its contract with SSA.

"Using health information technology will improve our disability programs and provide better service to the public," said Michael J. Astrue, Commissioner of Social Security. "We've seen a significant increase in disability applications. To process them, the agency sends more than 15 million requests annually for medical records to healthcare providers. This largely paper-bound workload is generally the most time-consuming part of the disability decision process. The use of health IT will dramatically improve the speed, accuracy, and efficiency of this process, reducing the cost of making a disability decision for both the medical community and the American taxpayer." The contract awards are funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Dr. Rob Jackson, the Chairman of SEMHIE, stated, "This is very exciting for SEMHIE to have achieved. We have the foundation to offer more business services of benefit to our community."

SEMHIE's service, with a patient's authorization, sends SSA the specific electronic medical records required by SSA through the Nationwide Health Information Network (NwHIN). The NwHIN is a safe and secure method for receiving access to the discrete data elements, values and text over the Internet. The NwHin is an initiative of the Department of Health and Human Services supported by multiple government agencies and private sector entities.

For the past year, SEMHIE has been working with the Social Security Administration to successfully integrate SEMHIE's Service Oriented Architecture (SOA/Cloud) and infrastructure into the NwHIN to respond to an SSA query for information obtained from Electronic Medical Records systems (EHRs).

The funds from this contract award enabled Oakwood Healthcare System, a major hospital system that is a collaborative partner member of SEMHIE, to link its systems to the NwHIN. Ultimately, when additional funding is procured, it is anticipated that the other major hospital systems in the Detroit Metro area will perhaps use the same infrastructure to provide a similar service.

SEMHIE's service is now validated on the NwHIN and can process an electronic medical record in the CCD (Continuity of Care Document) format required through the NwHIN and from there, into SSA's data center. With the completion of all milestones under the contract, SSA has officially validated the SEMHIE service's ability to perform as designed. SEMHIE's Project Manager for the SSA Contract Michael M. Talley noted, "This is huge for the State of Michigan and is an indicator of the caliber of the work being done in our state in health information exchange."

Paula Fusco Smith, SVP & CIO of Oakwood Healthcare System and the Vice Chairman of the board of SEMHIE, stated, "This is a great step for Southeast Michigan and the SEMHIE organization. Oakwood is excited about being one of the leading health systems to initiate the health information exchange between the healthcare providers and Social Security Administration."

The SEMHIE CCD NwHIN gateway service interoperates with the web-services systems at Oakwood Healthcare System, so that the health system can transmit a patient's electronic medical records that are required to complete a "query for information" application for social security disability with SSA. Patients have a strong incentive to use the service, because they won't have to wait the typical year and a half to have their application adjudicated by SSA. The health system will reduce the amount of uncompensated care by participating in this gateway, since most applicants for social security disability insurance are unable to work and are unemployed.

SEMHIE's strategic IT collaborative partners in the SSA project are CNSI and CSC. These are two of the four entities which built the NwHIN for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Architects and technicians at CSC and CNSI worked with SEMHIE's experts, including Program Manager Michael M. Talley and Clinical Architecture, openAirWare and Dr. Gary Assarian to architect the solution proposed to SSA.

Cathy Cimino, CSC Project Manager, stated, "The completion of the final milestone is a tremendous achievement for SEMHIE. It demonstrates the successful leveraging of technology in a way that helps a large number of people. CSC is proud to be part of this initiative."

CNSI's Senior Vice President Sharif Hussein stated, "CNSI is proud to have served as a strategic partner and systems integrator to SEMHIE. Our team led the development and implementation of the solution which will improve access to healthcare services across the State of Michigan. We are excited about taking our Health Information Exchange solution and leveraging this technology nationwide for agencies and organizations to take the first step in creating a secure health records exchange."

About South East Michigan Health Information Exchange (SEMHIE) Southeast Michigan Health Information Exchange is a diverse member driven nonprofit multi-stakeholder consortium whose membership includes major health systems in the Detroit Metro Region (including Beaumont Hospitals, Detroit Medical Center, St. John Health System, Oakwood Healthcare System, and Trinity Health), payers, employers, providers, quality organizations, safety-net providers and healthcare professional associations. SEMHIE is leveraging existing and additional technologies across health care settings to improve information process flow, continuity of care, and to accelerate improvement in the quality and safety of care. By decreasing costs while improving the quality of care, SEMHIE will become a self-sustaining health information exchange serving Southeast Michigan.