Patient portal and communications standard enables shared decision making by allowing patients and practices to efficiently communicate

Cary, NC – February 24, 2014 — Medfusion, a leading provider of patient engagement and practice efficiency software, will be demonstrating the integrated Blue Button REST capabilities of the Medfusion Patient Portal at the 2014 HIMSS Annual Conference in Orlando, February 23-27. As part of Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) Interoperability Showcase, Medfusion will highlight how this communication standard can facilitate more efficient workflows for patients and applications to get their healthcare data from providers and multiple data holders.

ONC’s Automatic Blue Button Initiative is designed to advance access of both computer and human readable health data securely through electronic health records, increasing the likelihood of adoption of enhanced technology tools available to engage consumers.

“The Blue Button Initiative further promotes the industry’s move towards patient engagement and data exchange,” said Vern Davenport, president of Medfusion. “Patients should be able to easily access all of their health records, communicate with multiple providers and understand their payment responsibility. Our patient portal is well suited towards being a central hub for this information and Blue Button ensures all information will be accessible for patients as they need it.”

In the presentation at the ONC Showcase, Steve Emery, director of product management at Medfusion, and Virinder Batra, senior manager of product development at Medfusion, will discuss how Blue Button REST can help patients assemble their medical data in one place. Blue Button originally let patients download data to their local device, but Blue Button REST allow patients request and share medical data between different applications without downloading. Medfusion will walk through the process of a Blue Button REST client communicating with a Blue Button REST data holder to pull a patient clinical summary record (CCD).

“Blue Button REST puts patients in control of sharing their health care records with applications. Blue Button REST will strongly encourage interoperability between patient-facing applications and holders of patient data,” said Doug Fridsma, ONC’s chief science officer and director of ONC’s Office of Science & Technology in ONC.

Medfusion plans to support ONC’s Automatic Blue Button Initiative, Blue Button REST standards and the continued advancement of data accessibility and engagement of healthcare consumers.