The National Institute of Medical Informatics (NIMI) is a non profit organization dedicated to research and development of advanced healthcare information networking. NIMI is pleased to sponsor the Wisconsin Health Information Exchange (WHIE). The mission of WHIE is to provide a system where diverse stakeholders collaborate to enable secure, confidential exchange of health information between authorized users. We are pursuing a vision of a world where health professionals and patients access information securely, when and where needed, to improve the safety, quality and efficiency of health care and public health.
The WHIE system is supported by federal directives to establish an interoperable national health information infrastructure. Southeast Wisconsin was one of nine recipients of funding from the national Connecting Communities for Better Health program to develop production systems and establish best practices that can then be shared across the state and country.*
Recent WHIE accomplishments include: network integration work with the Wisconsin Health Alert Network, Wisconsin Immunization Registry and EMSystem; applications to various potential funding partners in collaboration with other RHIOs across the country; and business plan development. WHIE projects planned for 2009 include implementation of a regional patient record location service, a data exchange system to support emergency care, feasibility testing of electronic results routing between hospitals, outpatient settings and public health, and planning for a regional medication registry.
WHIE is a collaborative organization overseen by a broad based board of advisors. WHIE invites members to join in one or more categories including hospitals, outpatient clinical practices, skilled nursing facilities, other healthcare professional groups, laboratories, imaging centers, pharmacies, private health plans, ERISA plans, government plans, public health agencies, researchers or other data users, patient advocate organizations, professional associations, and corporate or philanthropic organizations.
* WHIE's initial organization was supported by grant number 1D1BTM00095-01 from the Office for the Advancement of Telehealth, Health Resources and Services Administration, DHHS, to the Foundation for eHealth Initiative. The contents are soley the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official view of HRSA/OAT and the Foundation for eHealth Initiative.
The principal investigator of the initial WHIE CCBH project was Dr. Seth Foldy, former Health Commissioner for the City of Milwaukee.
The co-principal investigators were Dr. Edward Barthell, an emergency physician and accomplished researcher in medical informatics, and Dr. Lawrence Hanrahan, chief epidemiologist of the Division of Public Health for the State of Wisconsin.
Mr. Kim R. Pemble serves as chairman of the board and executive director, and Ms. Elana Rotter serves as project coordinator. Blake Bialik is responsible for overseeing the technical operations of WHIE. Future leaders of the WHIE organization are to be selected and overseen by the WHIE board of directors.
Dr. Edward Barthell, Dr. Howie Croft, Mr. Kim Pemble, Mr. Scott Novogoratz, and Mr. Bruce Arnold are the managers of the NIMI non-profit organization.
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