HIEs are entities that bring together health care stakeholders within a defined geographic area and govern the electronic sharing of health information among them for the purpose of improving health and care. The foundation behind creating HIEs is that the ability to exchange health information electronically is critical to the efforts to improve the health care system.

The governance, structure and geographic scope of HIEs vary across the country. Some might be serve a small geographic region, while others serve a whole state or multi-state region. HIEs also have different technical models, with some acting as channel of health information and others serving as repositories of health data. There are different types of clinical data exchanged and services offered by HIEs.

Benefits of HIE are to facilitates exchange of patient-centric health information between providers, clinics and hospitals and gives providers patient-distinctive history, risks, gaps in care, reporting and care plans. Includes e-Prescribing, clinical observation, medication management, integrated payment support and secure provider messaging exchange and improves provider workflow by centralizing daily activities and simplifying administrative tasks. Integrates claims and other clinical information from multiple payers and rules engine identifies gaps in care, duplications or clinical issues. The Master Patient Index allows the data hub to grow and incorporate data sources from additional SSA sources, while maintaining the unique identity of each recipient.

To better track and securely share patients’ complete medical histories, many health care providers are engaging in health information exchange (HIE). Through this we can improve patient safety by reducing medical errors, exclude unneeded testing and paperwork and handling and it can reduced health related costs.