Informatics Corporation of America (ICA) has announced that the MidSouth eHealth Alliance (MSeHA) will transition from Vanderbilt’s technology platform to ICA’s commercial version of the solution to support the ongoing exchange of patient data throughout Shelby County and two adjoining counties in west Tennessee. ICA formed three years ago to take technology developed by physicians and informatics professionals at Vanderbilt Medical Center to the broader health care market. ICA’s informatics engine enables clinicians to access, evaluate and act upon patient information across disparate systems and enables interoperability between existing systems to provide the foundation for both hospital and HIE solutions. Allowing nominal validation and formatting of data regardless of source or format, ICA’s solution makes complete patient data accessible whenever and wherever it is needed, while ensuring that privacy and security requirements are met. ICA also provides reliable transmission and storage of data and facilitates intelligent monitoring and reporting capabilities.

Aon Consulting Worldwide, the global human capital consulting organization of Aon Corporation, has announced its partnership with Health Data Management Solutions to help mid-sized organizations identify and evaluate medical cost drivers through data-based health care analytics. The partnership between Aon Consulting’s Health & Benefits’ Center for Predictive Data unit and HDMS will allow clients in the middle market to receive quarterly analytic reports consisting of medical and prescription claims and eligibility data. These reports will help employers identify and evaluate opportunities to improve health care outcomes and control costs through more effective vendor management, cost management and health management. Additionally, these reports will enable organizations to benchmark their employee population’s health care trends and data against the market, employer size and industry. Aon Consulting currently provides similar analytic reports to large market clients.

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC), a non-profit standards development organization and accrediting body, announced that it has posted five new versions of program criteria for general public review and comment. Parties are requested to provide opinions, comments and suggestions of the upgraded criteria versions for EHNAC’s Healthcare Network Accreditation Program (HNAP-EHN) and e-Prescribing Accreditation Program (ePAP), as well as the first versions of EHNAC’s Financial Services Accreditation Program (FSAP-EHN), Financial Services Lockbox Program (FSAP-Lockbox) and Healthcare Network Accreditation Plus Select SAS 70 Criteria Program (HNAP-70), each of which are proposed for adoption. The comment period will last 60 days, commencing on Oct. 1, 2008 and ending on Nov. 30, 2008.

QuadraMed Corporation is adding InterSystems DeepSee embedded real-time business intelligence (BI) software to a new hospital registration auditing and quality improvement application. DeepSee is innovative technology that enables developers to enhance transactional applications so they can provide real-time BI to decision-makers. With DeepSee, application developers rapidly build interactive dashboards that are graphical displays of key performance indicators. Since these dashboards are embedded within applications, DeepSee makes it easy for users to access vital enterprise information. QuadraMed became an early adopter of DeepSee in order to provide operational BI to the system's users.

John Papandrea has joined SAP as senior vice president of the health care industry business unit. Effective August 1, 2008, Mr. Papandrea will help drive SAP’s industry leadership efforts in providing strategic software solutions to health care organizations around the world. Papandrea joins SAP from Deloitte Consulting, where he advised large health care organizations on information technology strategy, effective use of technology and technology innovation. Previously, Papandrea worked with Capgemini and Ernst & Young, driving strategic partner relationships and advising clients on the value derived from the use of information technology in health care, particularly in the clinical arena.