The Massachusetts HIE Procurement

I've written several blog posts about the Massachusetts HIE strategic and operating plan to implement a statewide backbone for connecting every stakeholder in the Commonwealth.

All procurements have been done and we can now share the selection with the public.  Here are the service providers we have chosen:

Direct Gateway -  Orion
Access and Identity Management System (AIMS) - Cognosante (Sub Contractor to Orion)
Provider Directory -  Initiate (Sub Contractor to Orion)
Clinical Gateway (HL7 interfaces to EOHHS/DPH) - Orion
Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative – HL 7 Interface - Orion
Syndromic Surveillance – HL 7 Interface - Orion
Healthcare Provider Portal (Part of Direct Gateway) - Compass (Sub Contractor to Orion)
Local Access Network Distribution (LAND) - Orion
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) SaaS - Symantec (Sub Contractor to Orion)
Hosting services in a private MA HIE cloud - Logicworks (Sub Contractor to Orion)
Technical Support –(includes Call center) - Orion
Business Support – Operations and Maintenance - Orion

The Gateway, Provider Directory, and PKI infrastructure will go live on October 15, 2012.    The additional services will go live in December 2012.

We believe that our System Integration vendor, Orion, has substantial US and international experience with Public HIE implementations.   Their centralized cloud hosted gateways keep costs low and agility high.   For those clinicians using non-certified or non-Direct compliant EHRs, Orion will provide and manage a low cost appliance in office settings to enable participation in bidirectional data sharing.  Initiate has rich experience with directories and query interfaces to directories, both patient and provider.   Symantec (which acquired Verisign) has thousands of public key infrastructure customers.    The combination of Orion, Initiate and Symantec seems highly credible to us.

We have completed an analysis of every EHR deployed in Massachusetts and discovered that we can connect 80% of our stakeholders (including Long Term Care and Behavioral Health) by creating HIE interfaces for:


•Meditech
•LMR (Self developed at Partners Healthcare)
•Cerner
•Allscripts
•eClinicalWorks
•GE
•WebOMR (Self developed at Beth Israel Deaconess)
•Siemens
•Epic
•NextGen
•athenahealth
•Quest Care360
•E-MDs
•Point Click Care
•Netsmart Technologies
•UNI/CARE Systems


The Massachusetts eHealth Institute (MeHI)  Last Mile Management Office will hire a System Integrator to manage interface development and the selection of implementation optimizing organizations to manage interface implementation and training.

With capital funding in place, a sustainable operating budget with public/private contributions, and strong vendors, we are confident the Massachusetts Statewide HIE will leverage Federal Standards to connect payers, providers, and patients in empowering ways.    I'll write many additional posts describing the technology and policy decisions we make along the path to our October go live.

Truly the perfect storm for innovation.