A large-scale HIE may involve many entities such as hospitals, radiology centers, labs, and physician practices. Successfully deploying a network that enables seamless communication between these varied entities requires a systematic multi-phase, multi-stage deployment life-cycle approach.

Following is a schematic representation of the Life Cycle of a typical HIE / RHIO implementation project undertaken by HealthUnity.

• Initiate
In this phase the primary stakeholders are identified and signed up, project financing plan is discussed, drafted and approved, a project vision and governance plan is drafted and approved by the primary stakeholders, the initial implementation project team is formed, and the project is officially kicked off.

• Master Plan
In this phase required data is gathered from as many stakeholders as possible. Based on this gathered data and the corresponding research, an overall Master Plan laying out the roadmap for the entire implementation project is formulated. This Master Plan would identify all the project phases, their timelines, and their functional scopes. The Master Third Party Adapter Plan is also created in this phase.
As a general rule, in the Master Plan, all HIE and RHIO HealthUnity implementation projects are divided into multiple phases. All these phases go thorough a standard set of stages as described below:

The following stages will be repeated for each phase:

• Phase Plan Stage HealthUnity will work with the customer project manager (Hospital or RHIO) to develop GAP analysis and functional specification based on the site assessment conducted earlier. Each entity in the phase will identify and assign all the project resources (other than the project manager) that will be involved in various stages throughout the phase. Other than the functional specification, the deliverables in this stage includes the master project plan, cost analysis, training plan, testing plan, and project schedule. Customer sign-offs are required for each of these items before the next stage begins.

• Build Stage The customer will follow the GAP analysis and upgrade existing hardware and / or software to meet HealthUnity requirements. HealthUnity will develop certain components (adapters) and will put together a customized package of the HealthUnity software.

• Pilot Stage HealthUnity will conduct thorough testing of the HealthUnity software. The real-life environment of the provider organization will be replicated using a staging platform. Tests will be documented and all bugs will be fixed prior to the next stage.
In parallel with testing will be the staff training. HealthUnity will provide training for all customer staff, including System Administrator(s) and physicians, and get them up to speed with the HealthUnity software.

• Deploy Stage The HealthUnity solution will be installed at each provider organization site. Any data present in the EMR system (of the provider organization) will be uploaded to the HealthUnity software. Once the data is successfully uploaded, the system will go live and all components of the HealthUnity software will be turned on. Feedback will be gathered from the users throughout the stage and HealthUnity will work with the customer project manager to resolve issues or concerns. If the HealthUnity Appliance is installed, then by the end of this stage, all HealthUnity admin tasks will be handed over to the designated customer system administrator.

• Phase Closure HealthUnity will meet with the customer project manager and other key individuals such as the customer system administrator to address open issues. The HealthUnity support team will be introduced. The customer and HU will identify and resolve maintenance issues such as support, monitoring, security threats and mitigation, bug resolution, backup and restore, and user accounts creation and deletion. This is a meeting to sign-off the phase completion. All members that were involved in the project will be present, including project stake holders. The HU project manager will ensure that any open issues still remaining is passed on to the HealthUnity support team. A deliverable for this meeting is the customer and HealthUnity sign-off for phase completion. HealthUnity will now proceed with the next round of phases.

The following stage is executed after the completion of all the planned phases:

• Project Closure This stage of the project consists of all the logistics for the official closure of the implementation project to the satisfaction of the stakeholders. It also consists of an official Customer Feedback Survey and a report to identify the lessons learnt and improvement areas for future projects. This stage also takes care of the transition of the network to the Operations and Support staff that will run the network on an ongoing basis.