April 29, 2010
Axolotl’s Elysium Exchange Solution Will Help Transform the Delivery of Health Care and Reduce Health Care Costs in Maryland
San Jose, CA and Baltimore, MD April 29, 2010 – Axolotl Corp., the nationwide leader in health information exchange (HIE) services and solutions, and Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), the state-designated entity for Maryland’s health information exchange (HIE), today announced that CRISP has selected Axolotl’s technology as the core infrastructure for the state’s health information exchange.
CRISP is a private, non-profit organization with a goal to enable safer, timely, efficient, effective, equitable, patient-centered health care to all Marylanders through health information technology. After a comprehensive planning process, CRISP was selected by the Maryland Health Care Commission to implement the statewide health information exchange. This work is being funded through the state’s unique all-payor system as well as through a $9.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). ONC also recently selected CRISP to serve as the health information technology Regional Extension Center (REC) for the state of Maryland. The Regional Extension Center, which will help more than 1,000 primary care providers throughout the state implement electronic medical records, is being funded with a grant of $5.5 million over four years.
“Our mission is to advance the health and wellness of Marylanders by deploying health information technology solutions adopted through cooperation and collaboration,” said David Horrocks, President of CRISP. “We specifically selected Axolotl for their extensive experience in operating many of the most successful statewide HIEs in the country. Utilizing Axolotl’s solutions, we can provide Maryland’s health care community with the tools and services it needs to appropriately and securely share health care data, regardless of the system a particular provider is using, to ensure patients receive the best care possible.”
The statewide HIE will operate using Axolotl’s Elysium Exchange suite of applications to clinically network the disparate hospital health information systems (HIS) and electronic medical records (EMRs) of health care providers, hospitals, public health organizations, long-term care facilities, federally qualified health centers, ambulatory care centers, radiology centers and laboratories. With Elysium Exchange, using a certified EMR, any provider can electronically exchange information seamlessly and naturally with other participants on the network. Physicians can communicate directly from their EMR system over an Internet connection, without the use of specialized hardware in the practice-bi-directionally sharing referrals, laboratory results, radiology reports, and other patient data, instantly and securely. Additionally, the Elysium Virtual Health Record (VHR) will provide all authorized physicians with single-click access to aggregated patient data from across the entire continuum of care. Furthermore, existing and new critical applications will be able to connect to the HIE via exposed web services offered through Axolotl’s standards-based service-oriented architecture (SOA) platform, called Elysium Open Access, bringing speed to value while simplifying implementation and reducing associated costs.
CRISP will take an incremental, value-based approach to building the statewide HIE, with the ultimate vision of providing a broad set of services based on stakeholder needs. Starting with the delivery of a wide range of clinical information including lab results, radiology and other transcribed reports, CRISP will then leverage the network to enable more advanced features such as point-of-care decision support. When fully implemented, the statewide HIE architecture will enable connections between Maryland’s approximately 47 acute care hospitals, 7,907 physician practices, public health organizations, independent lab and radiology centers, pharmacies and the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). CRISP will continue to pay special attention to medically underserved populations, helping to ensure they receive improved care and narrowing the gap in outcomes as compared with the general population.
“The goal of the statewide HIE is to ensure that all appropriately authorized providers throughout the state have the information they need, when and where they need to, to make the best decisions possible,” said David Sharp, Director, Center for Health IT, Maryland Health Care Commission.
“Axolotl is excited to be partnering with CRISP and other stakeholders in the state of Maryland to immediately begin building the technological foundation for the state’s health information exchange,” said Glenn Keet, President of Axolotl. “Together we will provide Maryland health care providers and patients with the ability to securely connect to the statewide exchange while facilitating Maryland hospitals and health systems in achieving their individual HIE goals.”
Maryland will be Axolotl’s fourth state designated entity HIE customer, after Idaho, Nebraska and Utah. Among its other customer engagements, Axolotl’s software powers large multi-stakeholder exchanges at HealthBridge in Cincinnati as well as five metro-area exchanges in the state of New York.
