The Ohio Health Information Partnership – a Medicity client and the state-designated HIE for Ohio – announced today that it is the first state in the nation to successfully send and receive health information across state lines using the ONC’s Direct Project secure messaging protocols in a production instance. A “production instance” means the exchange was live, and physician office staff used the tool to exchange real – rather than test – messages.

Medicity technology facilitated the exchange of Direct messages between physicians’ offices in Lima, Ohio, and Biloxi, Mississippi. Mississippi’s state-designated HIE – the Mississippi Health Information Network (MS-HIN) – is also a Medicity client.

“We at ONC are excited to see this first productive use of Direct protocols for the exchange of health information between two states,” said Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM, National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

The Partnership also performed live instances of Direct messaging within the state of Ohio. Get more details from the Ohio press release that circulated today.

With these successful exchanges of Direct messages accomplished, the Ohio Health Information Partnership and Medicity are finalizing a mass deployment plan to provide all Ohio practices with our Direct application. We look forward to additional breakthroughs and firsts in this new frontier of health information exchange.