Florida HIE Launches With Secure Email Via Direct

Florida’s statewide health information exchange has gone live with secure messaging using the Direct Project protocols, its first milestone in enabling healthcare providers to share patient information. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration and its IT services vendor Harris Corp. have launched the secure email service so providers can “push” encrypted electronic messages to recipients who are known to them via the Internet, according to an Aug. 30 announcement.

The Direct Project protocols are a streamlined version of the standards and services of the nationwide health information network (NwHIN) in the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). The Florida state Health Information Exchange (HIE) communications service supports data sharing requirements for meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs), such as the ability to transmit summary of care patient records to another provider...