Redwood MedNet Deploys Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange(TM)

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Mirth Corporation, the leader in commercial open source healthcare information technology, and Redwood MedNet, a Northern California-based Health Information Exchange serving a broad rural geography, announced the deployment of the Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange (Mirth MUx) interoperability infrastructure. Redwood MedNet joins other innovative HIEs, hospitals and clinics that have selected Mirth to rapidly establish local information exchange services, and to set the stage for national information exchange via the Nationwide Health Information Exchange (NHIN).

"We are focused on helping health care providers across Northern California meet anticipated meaningful use objectives," said Will Ross, Project Manager at Redwood MedNet. "Our key constituency is the small hospital or small practice which lacks the information technology resources of large healthcare organizations. Technology adoption for electronic health data interoperability can be a daunting challenge for a small organization with limited technology resources. Redwood MedNet helps small facilities succeed because electronic health data delivery is our core business. The release of Mirth MUx improves our ability to quickly bring electronic health data interoperability to any facility," added Ross.

Mirth MUx is designed to enable healthcare delivery organizations of all sizes to achieve proposed meaningful use criteria for clinical information exchange. The federal stimulus plan offers physicians the potential to receive up to $44,000 in incentive payments over five years, and hospitals the potential to receive millions over a similar period. The ability to exchange clinical information is among the central requirements of the federal meaningful use criteria, which enable a facility to qualify for the federal incentive funding. More importantly, secure and appropriate health data exchange makes critical patient information - lab results, radiology reports, medication histories, patient allergies - available to health care providers in other facilities, such as specialty clinics, ambulatory surgery centers or hospitals. Improved access to patient data, made possible by health data exchange, will also help reduce preventable medical errors which happen every day in the U.S. due to the unavailability of records where and when they are needed.

"Mirth MUx is a game changer in two respects," added Ross. "First, it is backed by a large community of developers and users creating a library of interfaces and tools. That means we're not in this alone - we all share the development costs."

"Second, it eliminates the cost and inefficiency of one-off, point-to-point connections by releasing a standard NHIN-enabled gateway configuration. Mirth MUx brings all health care facilities one step closer to the universal exchange of electronic data. Installing these tools will benefit local patients and providers, and will help improve the local quality of care for patients traveling into our region, and will help improve the quality of care for our local patients when they travel to other regions of the country by building a safer, more connected health data delivery system," added Ross.

"Redwood MedNet has demonstrated both vision and pragmatism in its approach to enabling its constituent organizations to exchange health information; where some organizations talk the talk, RedWood MedNet walks the walk," said Jon Teichrow, president of Mirth Corporation. "They've been operational for nearly three years, and we've enjoyed a strong partnership for nearly that long. By embracing Mirth MUx and its NHIN-enabled gateway, Redwood MedNet can now operate at a national level - to the benefit of its constituent hospitals and healthcare providers, and most importantly to improve care for the patients they serve," added Teichrow.

Mirth MUx enables healthcare organizations to securely exchange clinical information such as patient clinical summaries, lab results, medication histories and other records directly or via the NHIN. Designed to support standards such as HL7 and the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), Mirth MUx enables organizations to go live in weeks, and at a far lower cost than traditional vendor solutions. The Mirth MUx document portal gives authorized healthcare providers secure access to critical patient information via any Internet-connected computer.

Since its launch as the Mirth Project in 2006, Mirth Connect - a core component of Mirth MUx - has become the most widely downloaded open source software for healthcare data integration, with over 70,000 worldwide downloads and a user community numbering over 7,000 professionals. Mirth Connect supports all major healthcare data interchange standards, including HL7, X12, DICOM, NCPDP, and XML.

About Mirth Corporation

Mirth is a global leader in commercial open source products and services powering healthcare interoperability. It also delivers information technology consulting, hosts high availability secure applications. Mirth solutions are used daily by thousands of health professionals and institutions worldwide to streamline care management processes and to securely exchange health information. The Mirth Project represents the first in a series of Mirth initiatives aimed at transforming health information technology by making high-value information technology utilities available to the healthcare community on an open source basis. For more information visit www.MirthCorp.com.

About Redwood MedNet

Redwood MedNet began delivering electronic laboratory results in 2008 in Mendocino and Sonoma Counties, expanded to radiology results in 2009, and in 2010 will expand to electronic prescriptions and patient medication histories, and will also expand into neighboring counties. A leader in health data delivery for small hospitals, clinical practices and ancillary health data services, the annual conference and monthly webinars offered by Redwood MedNet educate hundreds of regional health care professionals.

SOURCE Mirth Corporation