• Collect integrate, and analyze any health-related data stored anywhere.
• Deliver healthcare information in a secure, cost-effective, highly scalable manner, anywhere-anytime, without disrupting existing I.T. infrastructures or congesting networks.
• Provide evidence-based decision support for all areas of healthcare.
• Drive continuous quality improvement.
• Promote collaboration between all stakeholders across all healthcare disciplines and environments.
• Provide business process management functions that streamline and automate the flow of information between people and computers.

CHA Flowchart

1. These are the data sources, which include any databases; electronic files of any type; manual input forms (including forms on web sites, in software packages, scanned hard-copy forms, telephone-based input, and any other means of input); data generated by software applications; and any other sources of data.



2. The content from the data sources are obtained by the patient health-data file generation and data transmission template, which:
   • Resides in an easy-to-use software application, which can be operated from any PC or server, using any processing model.
   • Obtains the requisite data via queries, imports, data streams, APIs, and any other suitable method of data acquisition.
   • Integrates, cleanses/validates, and analyzes the data it obtains as indicated by the processing model it uses.
   • Organizes the data into compact data structures stored in a small (delimited text) file. This file can saved in the computer doing the processing and/or it can be transmitted to other locations.
   • Encrypts and transmits all or a portion of the patient's health file to authorized stakeholders, as necessary. This can be done via any process, including a publisher-subscriber process, where the template's publisher functionality creates health files and sends them to authorized stakeholders subscribing to the template's owner. The files can be transmitted in any manner, including e-mail attachments, html or ftp file transfers, P2P file sharing, etc.
   • Sends particular patient data, stripped of personal identifiers, to a centralized research data warehouse, as determined by its processing model.


3. A second template, the patient health-data file access and presentation template:
   
   • Also resides in an easy-to-use software application, which can be operated from any PC or server, using any processing model. The same computer can operate both templates, or operate just one.
   • Retrieves a patient's health-data file from where it is currently stored, or retrieves a health-data file being transmitted from another location.
   • May retrieve additional information from other databases, such as clinical reference materials, treatment guidelines, and research data.
   • Unencrypts and formats the file and displays its contents on screen and/or in a print-out.
   • Can work in conjunction with third-party products as necessary.

Benefits of the Hii CHA

• It accomplishes complete interoperability, regardless of the data sources, data standards, operating systems, communications infrastructure, type of content, software applications used, and information access requirements.



• It manages a huge amount of information on all patients over their entire lifetimes, and enables rapid, anywhere-anytime access to information.



• It integrates and stores information from diverse sources in a uniform structure for use across multiple platforms and applications.



• It can use a multitude of security methods.



• It accommodates a large variety of health informatics applications, including universal-lifetime electronic health record systems, clinical pathways/guidelines and outcomes assessment tools for all disciplines, post-market drug survey systems, case management systems, risk-adjusted performance systems, and referral management systems.



• It is the most efficient way possible to transmit data; while it is fully compatible with XML, it is up to 2,000% faster to deliver and present and up to 1,700% smaller to store than XML files. This ultra-efficiency means saving time and money by minimizing data transmission and storage costs, while consuming very little bandwidth.



• It allows information to be modified (e.g., annotated, updated, etc.) quickly and easily, and to be tracked, reversible and attributable.



• It provides a way information can be repurposed for different presentation media.



• It can use easy, low-cost ubiquitous methods of information transport, such as secure e-mail attachments and P2P file exchange.



• It can be used with any models to define what data are collected, how the data are analyzed, and what information is presented to the user, and how it is displayed. This is crucial since different models and sets of data are utilized by different individuals. The CHA can, for example;


• Add data to a model and distribute those additions when necessary. This is important in collaborative situations when different people must input data to complete a data set. It is also important when several analytic models are used to compute the same set of data, and certain models require additional data.
• Restrict portions of a data set from being accessed by particular models. This is important when different stakeholders with different roles require only a portion of a data set. It helps assure people get to see only the data they need so as to minimize information overload.
• Different portions of a patient's health record can be integrated from and sent to diverse sources seamlessly.


• It provides an alternative to relying solely on a single large centralized database, through federated and highly localized services. That is, our CHA can build composite patient records from diverse sources, which can be stored in many different locations and be reconstructed from the parts as needed. For example, providers could store the records of their own patients in their own computers, portions of which could then be exchanged with other provides, and which could also be integrated with information from other sources as necessary. At the same time, any portions of any record could be sent to a centralized database for aggregate data research. Benefits of this federated/localized approach include:
• Rapid information access since the people most likely to need particular portions of a patient's record can get it directly from their local storage.
• Efficient health-data maintenance, whereby each stakeholder manages only the information relevant to that entity, while enabling the information from multiple locations to be combined into a composite health-data as required by other entities.
• Information survivability in the face of terrorism and natural disasters since it is much less likely that a patient's entire health-data would be destroyed if components are distributed among multiple locations, rather than everything being stored in just a few places.