LANSING, Mich., Dec. 01, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) today announced that it will collaborate with Velatura Public Benefit Corporation (Velatura) and findhelp (formerly known as Aunt Bertha) to establish a national health information exchange (HIE) portal, advance shared application programming interfaces (APIs) and provide a pathway to interoperable referrals.
The pandemic continues to reveal how the circumstances of a person's life can dramatically affect their health beyond the medical care they receive. Research shows that social determinants of health (SDoH) such as lack of adequate housing, food, safety, and mental health, can negatively impact health care outcomes upwards of three times as much as medical care alone. Together, MiHIN, Velatura and findhelp are working to provide a safe, secure, and effective platform to connect patients with the social services they need.
“We are excited to add findhelp.org to the community of organizations interested in enabling truly interoperable referrals,” said Tim Pletcher, DHA, Executive Director of MiHIN. "We want to reaffirm that, as always, when MiHIN offers tools to ensure those with limited resources have access to basic functionality at low or no cost, we remain fully committed to fostering a multi-vendor interoperable ecosystem with open APIs and standardized use cases to ensure data can be shared across the state and nationally.”
In solidarity with ending information blocking of health data, MiHIN, Velatura and findhelp will enable a more interoperable social care sector through this collaboration. The partnership will encourage vendors providing platforms to social care and community-based organization to equally commit to eliminating health data silos and subscribe to these five core principles supporting this mission:
- Service providers should be able to work within their chosen systems of record
- Consumers should have access to their own data and full transparency into who will have access to their data if they consent to a service
- A commitment to the use of national standards (e.g., HL7 FHIR Gravity Accelerator) and open APIs
- Recognition of the need for that data aggregation from multiple systems sectors is necessary to quantify demand and utilization for services, to ensure service quality and inform policy makers provide information to better steward scarce resources.
- Support for the state designated entity, statewide HIE, or health data utility to serve as the trusted broker to ensure an interoperable ecosystem among the medical, public health, and social care communities.
“Current solutions to address unmet social needs remain disconnected by the lack of interoperability in this space and instead function as disjointed proprietary silos that inhibit whole person care,” said Marty Woodruff, Chief Operating Officer of MiHIN. “Interoperable social care data is a critical element for holistic treatment of individuals and populations, where neither people, nor data, is bound by systems or geography. MiHIN remains committed to the concept of vendor neutral health data interoperability and in seeking partners steadfast to these principles. We’re proud to be partnering with Velatura and findhelp to usher in a new era of whole person care and advance social care interoperability in Michigan.”
MiHIN’s participation in this collaboration provides the opportunity for those organizations inside Michigan that are already using findhelp and collaborate through the MiHIN Use Case Factory to share data formally and legally with the broader Michigan community.
“Findhelp began with a simple idea—that every person and family should be able to find help with dignity and ease,” said Erine Gray, findhelp’s Founder and CEO. “We’re thrilled to be partnering with MiHIN and Velatura to advance interoperability and connect people with the social care services that they need and deserve.”
To learn more about how to participate in this collaboration and join our community of interest, visit mihin.org. For more information on findhelp’s social care network, please visit company.findhelp.com.
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About Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services
The Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is Michigan’s state-designated entity to improve healthcare quality, efficiency, and patient safety by sharing electronic health information statewide, helping reduce costs for patients, providers, and payers. MiHIN is a nonprofit, public-private collaboration that includes stakeholders from the State of Michigan, Health Information Exchanges serving Michigan, health systems and providers, health plans/payers, pharmacies, and the Governor’s Health Information Technology Commission. For more information, visit https://mihin.org.
About Velatura
Velatura Public Benefit Corporation creatively connects and aligns people, organizations, technology, ideas, and information in both the public and private sectors to improve healthcare, reduce costs and to increase satisfaction of stakeholders in the health IT value chain. Through its operating units of Velatura Services, Velatura HIE Corp and USQHIN, Velatura Public Benefit Corporation looks to service the landscape of needs across the country for sustainable interoperability.
About Findhelp
Findhelp’s network connects people seeking help and verified social care providers that serve them. Thousands of nonprofits and social care providers serve their communities. But for most people, navigating the system to get help has been difficult, time consuming, and frustrating. Too many Americans are suffering, and they don’t need to. So, at findhelp, we created a social care network that connects people and programs — making it easy for people to find social services in their communities, for nonprofits to coordinate their efforts, and for customers to integrate social care into the work they already do. Today, findhelp serves millions of users and is used by most major health plans, hospital systems, foundations, governments, and tens of thousands of community-based organizations (CBOs). To learn more about findhelp’s social care network, please visit: company.findhelp.com.
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