CommonWell Plans EHR Pilot; Denies Data Will Be For Sale

A joint effort to provide interoperability among the electronic health records systems of competing vendors is proceeding without a great deal of transparency and openness outside of the participating members.

Three months ago this week, Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, Greenway and athenahealth—rivals all—announced the CommonWell Health Alliance, a joint effort to provide interoperability among their electronic health records systems and others.

Technology companies are good at announcing such alliances, but customers often never see all the benefits promised. Making different technologies interoperate is difficult, and U.S. companies in particular are predisposed to compete with each other, making attempts at interoperability even tougher.

But since 90 days have passed, I thought it was time to check in with CommonWell to see how things are going, particularly since we haven't really gotten any general progress reports from the group.