Context: The Governor's Board for eHealth Care Quality and Patient Safety plans for universal adoption of electronic health records and information exchange.
Objectives: The inventory sought to describe characteristics, challenges, and policy recommendations of health information exchange (HIE) projects and create a directory and baseline for periodic reassessment.
Design, setting, subjects: A cross-sectional Internet survey of any project where electronic patient information was transmitted by multiple organizations in Wisconsin in 2006.
Main outcome measures: A description of operational and planned HIE projects, including stage of development, information users, organizational home, funding, governance, geographic scope, data standardization, drivers, internal and external challenges, and recommendations for statewide action.
Results: Twenty-one organizations sponsor 16 operational and 11 planned HIE projects. Most are surveillance programs, but a growing proportion serves clinicians and patients. Under half use data standards for interoperability. Leading internal challenges relate to funding, organizational and staff issues, governance, and technology. Leading external challenges are marketing, enlisting participants, regulatory issues, and sustainability.
Conclusion: Wisconsin enjoys rich experience with HIE, but data remains largely in separate silos. Statewide collaboration, coordination and resource sharing can enhance the future of exchange efforts.