HealthUnity is proud to announce that Maryland's first operational Health Information Exchange (HIE) will be powered by the HealthUnity HIE solution. Officially launched on October 15th, the HIE is founded by Erickson Retirement Communities and St. Agnes Hospital.

A collaborative project between Erickson Retirement Communities and St. Agnes Hospital, the HIE establishes an instantaneous patient data exchange between their respective Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems, the first such deployment in the U.S. between a hospital and a continuing care retirement provider. The system demonstrates the feasibility of efficient and secure healthcare data interchange while proving the value of a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO).

The goal of seamless health information interoperability was accomplished with the deployment of HealthUnity's award-winning solution for HIEs - a secure, privacy-protected, standards-based infrastructure for health care data collaboration.

"The real-time exchange of patient data benefits our residents tremendously - when they are treated at St. Agnes, the care will be seamless and the caregivers will be fully informed about each patient's medical history," said John Erickson, Chairman and CEO of Erickson Retirement Communities. "We believe that the time has come to empower all consumers of health care by allowing them to instantly share their medical information."

The HealthUnity-powered Baltimore HIE allows residents from Charlestown Retirement Community, a campus developed and managed by Erickson, to be referred to St. Agnes Hospital for inpatient services and emergency care with their medical records electronically shared between the two institutions. The solution facilitates the exchange of information such as patient demographics, allergies, medications, discharge summaries, and clinical summaries. It allows for both viewing and importing of standards-based clinical documents between the MEDITECH clinical information system at St. Agnes Hospital and the GE Centricity electronic medical record system used by Erickson Health, the nation's largest health and wellness system for senior adults.

"Establishing a secure Health Information Exchange between Erickson and St. Agnes Hospital will enhance the quality of patient care the hospital can provide to Erickson residents," said Bonnie Phipps, President and CEO of St. Agnes Hospital. "Such a collaboration will allow us and our patients immeasurable benefits including a reduction in turnaround time for retrieval of up-to-date patient information; the elimination of paper-based transmission of patient clinical information; a reduction in the need for patients to inform physicians of chart updates when moving between care settings, either verbally or through filling out redundant forms; and a reduction in resident's average length-of-stay."

To lead this initiative, Michael Penn, manager of external integration with Erickson, Ken McCormick, director of informatics with St. Agnes, and Edmond Magny, consulting with Audacious Inquiry, coordinated the efforts of the integration teams and helped develop a comprehensive strategy for healthcare data exchange.

Health Services Integration enables the following:

• Immediate access to comprehensive patient information
• Improvements in the quality of care administered to Erickson residents
• Facilitation of communication among medical service providers
• Lower healthcare costs associated with patient treatment and administration

Tests of the system have received an overwhelmingly positive response by St. Agnes and Erickson Health physicians, with more than 90% of them giving the system a positive rating.

"It is essential that our nation's healthcare system take advantage of technology for health information interoperability across a wide range of care settings," said Dr. Matthew Narrett, Erickson's Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. "This health information exchange system is raising the standard of excellence."

The joint venture recently received a prestigious "Finalist" award for interoperability from the HIMSS Microsoft Healthcare Users Group (MS-HUG).

HealthUnity has won a contract with Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp), the nation's second largest provider of laboratory services, to electronically provide lab results to their customer clinics. The initial stage of the deployment is already live, connecting LabCorp to their largest primary care provider in Sandpoint, Idaho. The HealthUnity LabHIN^TM product, a part of the HealthUnity Health Information Exchange (HIE) solution, was deployed in less than one month and fully integrates with the NextGen Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system used on site.

After being generated at LabCorp, lab results flow electronically into the clinic's EMR system, allowing for the complete phase-out of the prior, paper-centric process. In addition to leveraging the lab result delivery feature of the HealthUnity HIE solution, the 17 users at the clinic are making full use of the HealthUnity securing messaging functionality to share lab results and collaborate electronically.

With the proven success of this initial deployment, HealthUnity and LabCorp are planning to jointly expand the electronic lab results delivery to other participants.

Some Key Statistics of Interest:

Clinic Name: Family Health Center

Number of deployed users:

• 13 Physicians
• 4 Administrative staff

Deployment and set-up of LabCorp HIE: 4 Weeks

Deployment of HealthUnity interface at Family Health Center and connecting to LabCorp HIE: 4 Weeks

Key benefits

• Ability to automatically import lab results directly into NextGen EMR in an unobtrusive manner.
• Ability to receive lab result from any trusted workstation on the clinic's network.
• Enablement of provider-to-provider electronic lab results sharing
• Physician electronic collaboration using the secure messaging functionality built into the HealthUnity HIE solution.

HealthUnity is proud to announce the general availability of Release 3.2 of our flagship Health Information Exchange Solution. The new version is already in use at three large-scale Health Information Exchange (HIE) production deployments and incorporates a variety of new features such as:

• HealthUnity network management console
• HealthUnity monitoring of system services
• Additional scalability and performance improvements
• Detailed guidelines for systems maintenance
• Updated user documentation and guides

All of the above features have been designed to build upon our current product offerings to further meet the requirements of our existing and prospective customers. We are very grateful for all the feedback provided by our outstanding healthcare customer community in the Baltimore (MD), Long Island (NY), Spokane and Bellevue (WA) and Idaho regions. This release is the culmination of many hours of effort and long days by the development group. Many thanks to the teams in Bellevue and Bangalore for their hard work!

HealthUnity went live with PACLAB, a division of Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML) in Q1 of 2007. Now (August 2007) the interface has been certification tested and ready for rapid roll out in the Seattle Eastside, delivering near-real-time laboratory results to joint customers.

"This is an important milestone for us" said HealthUnity President and CEO Prem Urali, "and it enables us to launch our service in the Seattle area to a much broader set of customers."

PAML is a division of Bourget Health Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Sacred Heart Medical Center, located in Spokane, WA. PAML operates a state-of-the-art, full-service reference laboratory and maintains other laboratory operations throughout the western United States. PAML delivers a wide range of testing services to more than 100 hospitals and hundreds of affiliated physician practices throughout Washington, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, California, Utah, Wyoming, and Alaska.

PACLAB is a partnership between Providence Health System - Washington, Franciscan Health System - West, Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Bourget Health Services, Inc., Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories (PAML), Evergreen Healthcare, and Stevens Healthcare. PAML also serves as the managing partner. PACLAB's purpose is to apply timely, accurate and comprehensive laboratory services at a community level. PACLAB provides a community choice in an industry dominated by national players.

Mark Johnston, Chief Information Officer at PAML, added, "We are excited about working with HealthUnity. We have been very impressed by their technical approach to clinical results delivery and we are encouraged about their ability to provide a community view of clinical information and the delivery of our laboratory information to electronic health records. Our pilot sites in the Bellevue WA region have been successful and we anticipate broader deployment in that area."

Under the agreement, HealthUnity customers will be able to electronically receive laboratory results from PAML and PACLAB testing facilities directly into a HealthUnity appliance at a physician's office as an integrated part of their HealthUnity service. The benefits to physicians include faster receipt of critical clinical lab values and universal access to current and historical values from any by using the HealthUnity Client. Also, because HealthUnity is using a standards-based approach to its results delivery, it is much easier for physicians to import the information directly into their existing electronic medical record systems.

The PAML/PACLAB agreement is part of HealthUnity's goal of aligning itself with leading technology and services companies that serve the physician market. Mutual HealthUnity and PAML customers are already taking advantage of the partnership at primary care and specialty practices in Bellevue, WA. Jay Pathy, Senior Vice President of Business Development noted, "The positive feedback from these sites is very encouraging. We are looking forward to working with PAML to add many more practices."

HealthUnity and Nortel Government Solutions, a leading vendor of software solutions to the Federal Government are collaborating on joint customer projects.

"We are very excited about this partnership" said HealthUnity Senior VP of Business Development, Jay Pathy. "The combination of Nortel Government Solutions and HealthUnity creates one of the strongest teams in the rapidly evolving health information exchange industry. HealthUnity's strong momentum in terms of deployed networks and NGS' proven expertise in working with government customers will benefit our mutual customers tremendously."

"We are pleased to partner with HealthUnity and approach customers in the public sector as well as private sector. We believe HealthUnity's approach is unique and has the ability to deliver value to customers in a short period of time" said Phil Lahar, Director of Business Development, Nortel Government Solutions.

Nortel Government Solutions is a network-centric integrator, providing the services expertise, mission-critical systems and secure communications that empower government to ensure the security, livelihood, and well being of its citizens. Headquartered in Fairfax, VA, Nortel Government Solutions offers a one-stop shop for solutions designed to improve workforce productivity, reduce operating costs, and streamline inter-agency communications.