Three federally funded health IT initiatives will sponsor a joint forum to share their experiences and potentially foster partnerships to advance health information exchanges (HIEs).

The forum will be held in Dallas from April 30 – May 2.

Participants from three Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology-led contracts include the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN); the Health Information Security and Privacy Collaboration, which includes more than 40 states and territories developing common policies; and the 13-member State Level Health Information Exchange Consensus Project, which is developing guiding principals for state-level HIEs.

The forum’s goal is to explain the initiatives and the organizations’ need to cooperate on pertinent issues as trial implementations of the NHIN begin, solicit public input, and provide a venue to share ideas and possible solutions.

Specifically, the goals of the joint forum are to:

• Enable cross-project discussion of important topics pertinent to each effort including consumer permissions, HIE policies, and sustainability;
• Advance discussions and develop clarity on how the trial implementations are addressing key aspects of standards-based, private and secure information exchanges via the NHIN;
• Enlist public input and share experiences from state and regional health information exchanges as they implement and test trial implementations of the NHIN;
• Discuss how the work of Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel (HITSP) and the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology (CCHIT) are being used to inform the NHIN trial implementations;
• Showcase the privacy and security approaches states and territories are taking to protect health information that is electronically exchanged; and
• Provide participants with a venue to share ideas and discuss solutions to electronic HIE challenges.

Additional information is available at hhs.gov/healthit.