CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--InterSystems, a creative data technology provider dedicated to helping customers solve the most critical scalability, interoperability, and speed problems, today announced its extended support of Greater Houston Healthconnect, the regional health information exchange (HIE) serving 75 counties in Southeast, South and East Texas and Western Louisiana, to collect, normalize, aggregate, and share patient data in the wake of COVID-19.
Since the initial outbreak of COVID-19 hit the United States in early 2020, Texas has been a hotbed for the virus, recording almost 1 million cases to-date. In the face of a growing number of cases and the urgent, increased need for quality clinical data to make informed care decisions, Greater Houston Healthconnect leveraged its interoperable network powered by InterSystems HealthShare® to ensure the seamless integration of data from electronic health record systems (EHRs) to deliver a unified patient record at the point of care.
Greater Houston Healthconnect has employed HealthShare Patient Index since 2017 to uniquely identify and match patients across all of their caregivers. When the outbreak began, the HIE surveilled lab results and COVID-19 diagnosis codes to deliver reportable conditions on behalf of their participants. Healthconnect deployed its HealthShare Clinical Viewer to public health authorities across the region to reconcile COVID-19 reported patients, perform case investigations, and assist with contact tracing.
“During a public health crisis and especially this pandemic that seems to have greater impact on people with underlying conditions it is essential that healthcare providers have an accurate and comprehensive view of a patient’s health history,” said Nick Bonvino, CEO of Greater Houston Healthconnect. “In addition, we are supplying the data to a public-private collaborative led by the University of Texas School of Public Health for research into COVID-19. Healthconnect created cohorts of 10,000 and 200,000 patients, coinciding with the first and second peaks of the pandemic. The study is analyzing and will longitudinally follow these ethnically diverse populations with the goals of identifying risk factors for both favorable and unfavorable outcomes, surveil demographic, social, pharmacological, and comorbidity predictors, and develop best practices for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. Bonvino added, “Insight into how this virus behaves, identifying modifiable predictors, and sharing best practice treatment protocols will mitigate the risk for adverse outcomes.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the critical importance of interoperability in properly and quickly assessing patient needs and creating an effective care plan,” says Don Woodlock, vice president of Healthcare Solutions at InterSystems. “Interoperability is playing a pivotal role in curbing the spread of COVID-19 around the world and we are proud to support Greater Houston Healthconnect as they continue to serve patients.”
Greater Houston Healthconnect has worked with InterSystems since 2018 when J2 Interactive migrated Greater Houston Healthconnect to HealthShare from its previous platform. Since that time, InterSystems HealthShare has enabled the HIE to connect hundreds of hospitals and thousands of practices and post-acute entities in the Greater Houston area - a region that spans a large portion of Texas and Louisiana - to the same unified health record.
About InterSystems
Established in 1978, InterSystems is the leading provider of data technology for extremely critical data in the healthcare, finance, and logistics sectors. Its “cloud-first” data platforms solve scalability, interoperability, and speed problems for large organizations around the globe. InterSystems also develops and supports unique managed services for hospital EMRs, unified care records for communities and nations, and laboratory information management systems. InterSystems is committed to excellence through its award-winning, 24×7 support for customers and partners in more than 80 countries. Privately held and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, InterSystems has 25 offices worldwide. For more information, please visit Intersystems.com.
About Greater Houston Healthconnect
Greater Houston Healthconnect is an independent, community-based organization whose mission is to enable care coordination and deliver value-added services for the benefit of its stakeholders. Healthconnect mobilizes healthcare information electronically across organizations to enhance the quality, safety, and efficiency of care and improve information access throughout the region. Key stakeholders include healthcare providers, payers, employers and the community as a whole. For more information, visit http://www.ghhconnect.org.
