New Healthcare Interoperability Solution Leverages Age-Old Technology
According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology’s (ONC) State of Interoperability among U.S. Non-federal Acute Care Hospitals in 2018 Report, released in March 2020, the use of traditional fax for data exchange continues to rise.
In a recent article published in Healthcare IT Today, Consensus’s John Nebergall discusses how the Consensus interoperability platform leverages traditional faxing technology to provide seamless data exchange for healthcare organizations through next-generation faxing capabilities. With Consensus, providers now have the opportunity to move from paper faxing to a comprehensive interoperability system through an easy-to-use platform that connects healthcare organizations through the entire continuum-of-care:
“To end-users, the Consensus dashboard makes it appear as if you are sending a fax,” explained Nebergall. “You type in the recipient’s fax number, select your document and press SEND. Behind the scenes, the platform looks up that fax number and determines if there is a better method to transmit the information. That could be via a Direct Message via DirectTrust. It could even be delivered via an API to the recipient’s EHR. Of course it could also be to an actual fax number.”
Nebergall summarizes Consensus nicely: “None of the technologies we are using are new. We’re just offering a platform that integrates these technologies in a new way so that more healthcare organizations can exchange patient information electronically. This will be very important going forward as the industry moves to comply with the new electronic data interoperability requirements of the ONC Cures Act Final Rule.”
With Consensus, the complexity of multiple interoperability protocols is hidden behind a single, easy-to-use interface. This will be a boon for many healthcare organizations who lack the IT resources to fully implement complex interoperability frameworks.
Read the full article in Healthcare IT Today.