The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) kicked off its new NATE Blue Button for Consumers (NBB4C) Trust Bundle at the 2015 ONC Annual Meeting with a surprise display of interoperability in patient-mediated exchange. Shortly after NATE’s announcement, Greg Meyer, Director, Distinguished Engineer, Cerner Corporation, demonstrated how a provider using a Cerner electronic medical record (EMR) can simply push a patient record to the patient’s personal health record (PHR), in this case to the Humetrix iBlueButton app running on the patient’s smartphone.
The new NBB4C Trust Bundle helps relying parties to identify consumer facing applications (CFAs) that meet or exceed criteria considered to be the most important characteristics of a trustworthy steward of consumer health information, while still enabling patients to benefit from the value of having access to their health information. Participation in the trust bundle will facilitate secure exchange of health information from provider-controlled applications to consumer-controlled applications such as PHRs using Direct secure messaging protocols.
“Thank you to my colleagues at Cerner and Humetrix for helping NATE demonstrate the capabilities of the new NATE Blue Button for Consumers Trust Bundle at the ONC Annual Meeting. Greg’s demonstration today shows that the NBB4C is ready now to enable real world exchange between provider-facing applications and consumer-facing applications, empowering the consumer to get access to their data,” said NATE’s CEO Aaron Seib. “Our industry achieved a major milestone today. We studied the issues around securely sharing information from providers to patients and together we took a leap of faith. Consumers across the country will now have more control over their care. NBB4C gets the information flowing to where it should be: in the hands of the patient. I look forward to the day when patients across the nation routinely download their health information into a consumer-facing application of their choice and use it to improve their lives and the lives of those they love.”
The NBB4C Trust Bundle is the result of the next generation of NATE’s ongoing PHR Ignite Project and incorporates lessons learned from NATE’s administration of the Blue Button Consumer Trust Bundles. Over the past year, NATE and a task group made up of thought leaders in the patient-mediated exchange space worked together to develop a set of criteria and expectations that balances what is a ‘must have’ for today and what can wait until tomorrow, what is practical as a starting point and what is a showstopper that would kill consumer engagement if introduced. In November 2014, NATE crowdsourced the trust framework, calling for and receiving comments from across the industry. In January 2015, the NATE Board of Directors approved the workgroup’s recommendation for release into production.
“The NBB4C establishes a practical framework that will enable patients to securely exchange health information with their providers without burdening the patient with unnecessary steps to obtain their data and share it with whomever they choose,” said MaryAnne Sterling, Consumer Ombudsman for the NATE Board of Directors. “As a long time caregiver for my aging parents, this work is important to all of us who manage healthcare on behalf of others. I have confidence that applications participating in the NBB4C will meet or exceed my expectation that my family’s health information will be confidential and secure.”
Interested CFAs may begin onboarding to the NBB4C Trust Bundle now . Stakeholders interested in participating in the next phase of NATE’s work in consumer-mediated exchange should consider NATE membership or subscribe to news from NATE’s PHR Community.
About National Association for Trusted Exchange
The National Association for Trusted Exchange (NATE) brings the expertise of its membership and other stakeholders together to find common solutions that optimize the appropriate exchange of health information for greater gains in adoption and outcomes. Emerging from the Western States Consortium, a pilot project supported by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), NATE was established as a not-for-profit organization in May 2013. Consistent with NATE’s mission to address the legal, policy, and technical barriers that inhibit health information exchange between entities within a state and across states, NATE leads and participates in a number of ongoing and emerging projects in the HIE domain. NATE has been operating its own Trust Bundles in production since November 2012 and recently took over administration of the Blue Button Consumer Trust Bundles. Working with a broad set of stakeholders through multiple task forces, crowdsourcing and a call for public comment, NATE is proud to make available the first release of NATE’s Blue Button for Consumers (NBB4C) Trust Bundle beginning in 2015.
About Cerner
Cerner’s health information technologies connect people, information and systems at more than 18,000 facilities worldwide. Recognized for innovation, Cerner solutions assist clinicians in making care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help health care organizations manage revenue, as well as a wide range of services to support clients’ clinical, financial and operational needs. Cerner’s mission is to contribute to the improvement of health care delivery and the health of communities. Nasdaq: CERN.
About Humetrix
Humetrix has pioneered the development of innovative consumer-centered IT solutions over the past 15 years, which have been deployed around the world. The company’s award winning Blue Button enabled apps are the mobile embodiment of the U.S. Federal government Blue Button initiative available to more than 150 million Americans. Humetrix’s HHS award winning emergency and disaster preparedness mobile apps are now being advocated by EMS agencies across the US and were demonstrated at the White House Innovation for Disaster Response and Recovery Demo Day last summer.