Change Healthcare has launched a suite of cloud-based data interoperability services that will be offered for free, with the goal of making it easier for patients to access their medical data. The initiative was announced at this week's Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) meeting.
The offerings include record locator services, identity management, and document retrieval with patient privacy built in. The services will run in the cloud on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.
In announcing the initiative, Change noted that as consumers adopt more of the responsibility for their own care, they increasingly need access to their medical data. But this can be difficult when data are found in silos across various healthcare providers.
Change is working with AWS to provide a scalable, secure cloud service with high levels of availability. The interoperability services will include provisions to support patient privacy, and they will be based on open standards such as the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) and HL7, with open application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable the services to be integrated with all electronic medical record systems, according to the company.
