Google, Microsoft to integrate with national health records network

The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) plans to integrate the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) with the healthcare databases that Google and Microsoft launched last year, on which individuals can store their health records, according to the Health and Human Services Department (HHS)

That’s right, according to this article, ONCHIT also plans to expand NHIN to include EHRs stored in networks operated by the departments of Defense (DoD) and Veterans Affairs (VA), and the Indian Health Service, and integrated health systems that span numerous communities, said Charles Friedman, chief operating officer for the health information office within HHS.

Still in an early development stage, the “NHIN Connect” will use software developed by

• The DoD and VA for the Bidirectional Health Information Exchange, which clinicians in both departments use to share electronic patient information
• the National Cancer Institute for its Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid.

The NHIN Connect gateway aims to integrates healthcare IT information from several federal agencies into the NHIN. This includes VA, DoD and the Indian Health Service as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.