IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION
Solution Brief
Highlights
● Enables sharing of documents
and images among healthcare
enterprises—regardless of source,
location or format—in support of
improved patient care
● Serves as a data repository and
searchable registry of clinical docu-
ments within a sharing domain
● Records audit events generated by all
exchange interactions
● Is based on proven, scalable
IBM middleware
● Establishes a standard data-sharing
methodology vital to the creation
and adoption of electronic health
records (EHRs)
Transform healthcare through information sharing
IBM Health Information
Exchange
Healthcare enterprises and overseers face consumers who demand
more from their providers. These enterprises need better visibility into
patient health histories and performance metrics. Industry leaders
agree that healthcare IT is central to better information-sharing and
the collaboration required to optimize patient care and improve effi-
ciency. The IBM® Health Information Exchange can help.
Data collection efforts are commonly particular to specific care
settings—such as in the hospital or ambulatory care organization—or
to specific payers, both private and public. And it remains largely a
manual function performed by clinicians, who must sift through multi-
ple patient records obtained from many sources to abstract needed
patient health information and other performance data. Because data is
collected and used in fragmented ways, a holistic picture rarely
emerges.
The siloed data collection efforts of multiple providers inhibit the
creation of electronic health records (EHRs) that could follow every
patient through the healthcare system during their lives. Hospitals cite
most often the significant expense and system interoperability as hur-
dles prohibiting the widespread adoption of EHRs, the “holy grail” of
the healthcare IT industry. The IBM Health Information Exchange
can help achieve this goal by enabling you to sort through the multi-
tude of formats, protocols, systems and technologies and obtain the
information you need to successfully run your business and provide
quality service to the healthcare industry and consumers.
The exchange helps you share documents and images among health-
care enterprises—regardless of source, location or format. It also serves
as a data repository and searchable registry of clinical documents
within a sharing domain, and records audit events generated by all
interactions with the exchange. In addition, the exchange established a
standard data-sharing methodology that is a vital step in achieving the
goal of creating and adopting EHRs.
IBM SALES AND DISTRIBUTION Transform healthcare through information sharing
Solution Brief

The exchange transmits and receives feeds to and from a multitude of con-
sumer and source actors using Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE)
integration profiles, including:
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2009
IBM Corporation
● Cross-enterprise document sharing (XDS.a, XDS.b) repository and
Route 100
registry, which enables sharing of documents between healthcare Somers, NY 10589
enterprises.
Produced in the USA
● Audit trail and node authentication (ATNA), which provides patient November 2009
information confidentiality, data integrity and user accountability. All Rights Reserved
● Cross-community access (XCA), enabling the exchange of health IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are
information with other domains or communities. trademarks or registered trademarks of
● Cross-enterprise user assertion (XUA), providing a means to communi- International Business Machines
cate claims about an authenticated principal—such as a user, application Corporation in the United States, other
countries, or both. If these and other
or system—in transactions that cross enterprise boundaries. IBM trademarked terms are marked on
their first occurrence in this information
Built on a flexible, service oriented architecture (SOA), the exchange provides a with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these
scalable, reliable and secure information environment that can be implemented symbols indicate U.S. registered or
common law trademarks owned by
in a fully distributed, centralized or hybrid manner. The exchange adheres to IBM at the time this information was
interoperability standards, such as simple object access protocol (SOAP) and published. Such trademarks may
Web services interoperability (WS-I), and can encode clinical documents in also be registered or common law
extensible markup language (XML), rendering them easy to exchange. trademarks in other countries.
A current list of IBM trademarks is
available on the Web at “Copyright
The IBM Health Information Exchange represents an important step in the and trademark information” at
direction of achieving EHRs. The repository and registry engine of the solu- ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml
tion enables healthcare providers and consumers, administrators and govern- Other product, company or service
ment overseers to safely submit to, query and retrieve the requisite clinical names may be trademarks or service
marks of others.
documents with respect to privacy. Everything from medical history, prescribed
medicines and immunization status to laboratory test results, radiology images,
discharge summaries, billing records and physician’s notes.
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For more information

To learn more about the IBM Health Information Exchange, please contact
your IBM representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibm.com/healthcare

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