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Electronic Health Information Exchanges

Electronic Health Information Exchange (HIE) allows healthcare professionals as well as
patients to access and share vital medical information of a patient in a secure manner. Some of its
benefits include increasing efficiency of care, reducing healthcare costs, and improving
coordination of patient care which results in better patient outcomes (Hersh et al., 2015). For a
healthcare facility to fully enjoy the benefits of health information exchange, it is important that
it chooses a health information exchange technology that suits its needs.
Key Technologies That Are Used in Health Information System
There are three key technologies used in health information systems. These are query-
based exchange, directed exchange, and consumer medicated exchange (HealthIT, 2020). Query-
based exchange enables healthcare professionals to search and request relevant patient
information from various healthcare providers. Directed exchange, on the other hand, allows
healthcare providers to share patient information among themselves for support of patient care.
For instance, one healthcare professional may use the technology to securely send to another
healthcare provider patient information, such as laboratory results, discharge summaries, and
patient referrals. Lastly, consumer meditated exchange enables patients themselves to collect and
maintain important information about their health which they can use to manage their own health
(HealthIT, 2020).

How to Extract Data From Query-Based Exchange

Query-based technology is important because the electronic health record (EHR) systems
that are used in healthcare facilities are not the same. Due to these differences, healthcare
providers often find it difficult to locate and access the patient information that they need when
providing the patients with care that is unplanned. Query-based exchange helps healthcare

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professionals to access relevant patient information quickly using the Query, Select, and Retrieve
functionality (HealthIT, 2020). As the name of the functionality reveals, healthcare professionals
simply type in their query. They are then provided with information options to select. Once they
have selected an option, they retrieve the data and use it for patient care.
Data Analysis From Health Information Exchanges

Health Information Exchanges allow healthcare providers to access as well as share
patient information in a secure manner. The information helps in improving diagnostics, care
coordination, and efficiency of care that they are able to provide to patients. However, it is worth
remembering that patient data in health information systems is not always 100% (Ranade-
Kharkar et al., 2014). Before using the data, it is important for the healthcare professional to
ensure that the data is of high integrity. Healthcare data integrity shows the extent to which the
data exhibits characteristics, such as accuracy, reliability, timeliness, trustworthiness,
consistency, and completeness (Ranade-Kharkar et al., 2014). It is important that data be of high
integrity because healthcare professionals use the data to make important decisions about the
health of the patient. With regards to timeliness, for instance, healthcare professionals need to
examine when the patient data was captured. Patient data should be as recent as possible. As for
accuracy, the data should have the correct demographic and other information about the patient.
Thus, before a healthcare provider uses patient data retrieved from a health information system,
they need to ensure that it is of high integrity.
Conclusion

Health information exchange has the potential of significantly improving patient
outcomes by helping healthcare providers to access and use accurate, timely, and relevant patient

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information. However, for healthcare providers to fully benefit from health information
exchange, they need to a health information exchange technology that best suits their needs.

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References

HealthIT. (2020). What are the different types of health information exchange? | HealthIT.gov.
Healthit.gov. Retrieved on 18 May 2020, from https://www.healthit.gov/faq/what-are-
different-types-health-information-exchange.
Hersh, W., Totten, A., Eden, K., Devine, B., Gorman, P., Kassakian, S., & McDonagh, M. S.
(2015). Health Information Exchange. Evidence report/technology assessment, (220), 1-
465.
Ranade-Kharkar, P., Pollock, S. E., Mann, D. K., & Thornton, S. N. (2014). Improving clinical
data integrity by using data adjudication techniques for data received through a health
information exchange (HIE). In AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 2014, p.
1894). American Medical Informatics Association.