RHIOnet
RHIOnet Overview
RHIOnet is a secure, web-based, healthcare information exchange system targeted to delivering accurate and timely healthcare information to caregivers distributed across wide geographical areas. It provides authorized members secure access to information through an intuitive web-based interface, and does not require costly software distribution or user training. RHIOnet’s distributed architecture and use of open standards assure adaptability and expandability for the future.
History
The founders of APP Design have been working on RHIOs before there were RHIOs. Seriously. As part of the management team of Health Network Ventures (HNV), we worked on the planning and development of the fi rst Community Health Information Network, the Wisconsin Healthcare Information Network (WHIN), in 1993. At HNV we also worked on the Thorobred Health Information Network in Louisville, Kentucky, The Health Information Network Connection (THINC), a consortium of healthcare payers and providers in New York City, SIRHIN, a community health care network based in Chicago, and CALIBER, based in Philadelphia. Health Network Ventures product, HNVnet, was extremely advanced for pre-internet technology.
It offered the following transactions:
- patient census
- patient search
- laboratory results
- transcription reports
- histories & physicals
- consultations
- operative reports
- discharge summaries
- other transcribed reports
- radiology reports
from multiple sources, all in real-time. HNVnet pioneered the use of the “federated” model, allowing each entity to keep possession of its own data, and establish the specifi c access rights allowed to outside clients. Other HNVnet innovations included substitute users, allowing offi ce managers limited access on behalf of their providers, group/role based permission model, real-time monitoring and control of all interfaces, single sign on, the ability to “slipstream” provider ID’s into requests as they are transmitted to the information source. HNVnet also stored ID’s and passwords for external systems, allowing a true single sign on capability. And, in what was a radical step at the time, we developed the first web interface for Community Healthcare Information Networks.
RHIOnet
APP Design was founded in 1997, with the goal of producing a Community Healthcare Information Network system incorporating all the innovations of HNVnet, but based on internet technologies. APP focused first on the HIPAA transactions; eligibility and plan benefits, claims status, referrals, authorizations and remittance advices, that were in demand due to new federal regulatory requirements. This new system focused on the internal “plumbing” necessary to securely connect multiple disparate data sources to thousands of simultaneous users. RHIOnet (nee Eliginet) is the backbone for Western New York HealtheNet and New Mexico’s HealthXnet, and delivers more than 5 million transactions per month to more than 20,000 users. After the successful rollout of the HIPAA transactions, we enhanced RHIOnet to include the clinical transactions we pioneered with HNVnet, including clinical message delivery, secure messaging, lab orders and transcriptions.
User Interface
RHIOnet presents a simple, easy to learn, query by example user interface. Each page is presented to the user’s web browser as standard HTML, latest version browsers and esoteric plug-ins are not required. RHIOnet’s security and access control services allow each individual transaction to have its own permissions, for exceptional flexibility in the information display of each transaction. RHIONet’s display pages can be easily customized to meet custom display specifications. Below is a sample page showing custom header, footer, and menu areas.
