Interoperability champion releases PHR solution

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – InterSystems, a global leader in software for connected care, has announced HealthShare Personal Community, a patient engagement solution built on the interoperable InterSystems HealthShare health informatics platform.

InterSystems unveiled Personal Community today at the annual HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference in Chicago.

Personal Community is a configurable, vendor-neutral patient engagement solution for healthcare providers that gives patients an easy-to-understand, comprehensive view of their health information.

Certified for meaningful use Stage 2, it supports services such as appointments, prescription refills, provider-patient dialog, and patient education.

Because Personal Community is built on the HealthShare interoperable foundation, it provides patients as well as their authorized representatives a single point of access to electronic medical records in multiple formats and from many care settings – removing the hassle of managing multiple portals and passwords.

Patients can view, download, and transmit all or portions of their records to other members of the care team. An intuitive interface makes it easy for patients to review the medical record for accuracy, helping them partner with their providers for safer, high-quality care.

Early patient portals were one-dimensional personal health record (PHR) applications that required the patient to enter extensive personal data – dooming them to failure.

Second-generation portals, driven by meaningful use requirements, are single-source solutions tethered to individual electronic health record (EHR) systems, resulting in fragmented health information.

Personal Community is the first third-generation patient engagement platform designed from the ground up on an interoperable foundation, ensuring the patient has a single gateway to medical records across the care continuum.

Personal Community is an outgrowth of InterSystems’ deep experience and investment in health information exchange worldwide.

“The vision behind HealthShare is simple: to transform healthcare by sharing health information and connecting communities,” said Joe DeSantis, Vice President, HealthShare Platforms, InterSystems.

“In addition to providing the interoperability platform connecting private health systems, regional health information exchanges, and national health systems around the world, we are now building solutions that directly empower patients and enhance their relationships with physicians, care managers, health plans and everyone else involved in their care,” he added.

Customer Perspectives

HealthShare Personal Community has been in production use since last year. The following customers have deployed Personal Community for their own branded patient engagement solutions:

•  Neil Kudler, MD, Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Baystate Health, a health system serving western Massachusetts and creator of the Pioneer Valley Information Exchange (PVIX):

“Our patient engagement platform, My Baystate Health, is built on HealthShare Personal Community. Giving patients direct access to their medical information is a dramatic change in the culture of care. When patients can view their health status, not only does that serve as an engagement tool, but it becomes crucial data for the provider and the care team.”

•  Mark McKinney, CEO, Hixny, a regional health information exchange serving upstate New York that is helping providers meet meaningful use requirements cost-effectively:

“High-quality, affordable healthcare requires well-informed communication. Without that, everyone in healthcare has a different, and often incomplete, view. To transform care, information needs to follow patients as they move from one setting to another, at the transitions of care, from the hospital to the primary care facility to the specialist or a home care setting. The Hixny Secure Patient Portal, built on HealthShare Personal Community, provides a 360-degree view of each patient.”

•  Wayne Fellmeth, MD, Chief Medical Information Officer, Hunterdon Healthcare System, a community health system in New Jersey using the HealthShare information exchange as the enabling infrastructure for a medical home model:

“We created Hunterdon Healthy Connections, based on HealthShare Personal Community, because we want our patients to see this tool as a means of communication with their providers and as a ready source of reliable health information. A relatively healthy patient interacts face to face with a physician only about one hour per year. We have a vision to extend that interaction through a consumer-centric online patient wellness environment – one place, a ‘start page,’ where you can not only find all your own health records, but where you can research options, manage the health of your family, and communicate with your care team. Our portal leverages the comprehensive record in our ‘health cloud’ and, over time, we hope to make it the starting point for all community interaction with our healthcare system.”

Personal Community Availability and Features

Unlike single-source EHR-based portals created purely to “check the box” for meaningful use requirements, HealthShare Personal Community supports patient-centric communication for care coordination. It offers a real-time, intuitive view of all the information in the composite health record.

The look and feel of Personal Community is fully configurable to support the organization’s branding and market identity. The customer determines what data and what format to present to patients, the enrollment model most appropriate to the population, and the local content and reference materials to complement the overall engagement strategy.

Personal Community is available immediately. Pricing is based on the size and scope of the customer’s healthcare operations.

“InterSystems believes that enabling healthcare applications and communities to work together, in an easy and meaningful way, empowers healthcare organizations to make long-term improvements that change patients’ lives for the better,” said Paul Grabscheid, Vice President, Strategic Planning, for InterSystems. “Personal Community is the latest example of our commitment to deliver solutions for better, more connected care.”

For more information about the InterSystems HealthShare family of extensible, interoperable healthcare solutions, please visit www.intersystems.com/healthshare.

About InterSystems

InterSystems develops advanced software technologies that enable breakthroughs. With a passion for excellence and a focus on client success, InterSystems provides data management, strategic interoperability, and analytics platforms used in healthcare, financial services, government, and dozens of other industries. InterSystems also offers unified healthcare applications, based on its core technologies, that deliver on the promise of connected healthcare. Founded in 1978, InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide. Its products are used daily by millions of people in more than 100 countries.  Visit InterSystems.com.