THSA Seeking Hospital to Join STAR HIE Program

Join ONCs STAR HIE Program!

The HHS Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) administered funding from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Acts (CARES Act) to support health information exchanges (HIEs) under the Strengthening the Technical Advancement and Readiness of Public Health Agencies via Health Information Exchange (STAR HIE) Program.  The purpose of the STAR HIE Program is explained at this link: https://www.healthit.gov/topic/onc-funding-opportunities/strengthening-technical-advancement-and-readiness-public-health  

The Texas Health Services Authority (THSA), joined by HASA (a multi-regional HIE) and Audacious Inquiry (Ai), is seeking a hospital to join our recently awarded grant under the STAR HIE cooperative agreement program. The specific title of the project here in Texas is the “Situational Awareness for Novel Epidemic Response (SANER) Project.”

Under this cooperative agreement, THSA, HASA, Ai and a hospital system will conduct a proof-of-concept pilot to demonstrate real-time automated exchange of hospital capacity and other situational awareness data through application programming interfaces (APIs) using the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) data standard.

The objective is to establish technical connectivity from hospital facilities to the THSA either directly or through HASA.  THSA would then share the relevant information with authorized stakeholders such as state and federal agencies.  Using new industry standards, the end result would be decreased costs to the hospital in order to supply COVID-related data elements such as ventilator capacity, ICU beds available, and similar.