MiHIN’s Integrated Technology Platform (ITP) Migration
Future-Proofing our Technological Infrastructure
Michigan’s Health Information Technology 5 year Roadmap calls for enhancements to our state’s Health Data Utility (HDU), the shared data services that support vital information exchange functions. Ours is a valued public infrastructure requiring continual maintenance and enhancements to meet the needs of residents.
To catalyze the Health Data Utility, MiHIN is actively consolidating and integrating all legacy technology and interface engines to optimize and streamline our processes. This undertaking illustrates MiHIN’s unwavering drive to establish a forward-looking and market-responsive HIE, facilitating the seamless integration of clean, actionable data, real-time quality measures, point-of-care clinical insights, and more.
The transition began in the fall of 2022 and aims to be complete in 2025, with all participants being upgraded to the new Integrated Technology Platform (ITP), an open standards ecosystem built on AWS cloud-native computing and SMILE’s FHIR-friendly clinical data repository. With every step we take, minimizing impact to our members is our top priority.
Recognizing the ever-evolving healthcare landscape, we understand the need for agility in our approach. To best serve our members and ensure a smooth transition toward a future-proof HIE, we’re shifting our timeline for completion of the ITP. This updated timeframe, targeted for the first quarter of 2025, offers a broader window to account for unforeseen developments, while still providing a clear planning horizon. Our focus on minimizing member impact remains constant.
Next Level Capabilities
Our ecosystem demands next level capabilities, supported by new standards and technologies, that enable the collection, aggregation, and analysis of clinical and non-clinical data from multiple types of data sources. By embracing interoperability through our network, our participants can foster a more open and inclusive digital ecosystem that promotes user choice and data portability. When the transition is complete, the new Integrated Technology Platform will provide:
- Highest quality data supported by best-of- breed FHIR strategy in cooperation with Smile Digital Health and Availity Fusion for clinical data up-cycling, and proven and scalable FHIR conversion and streaming
- Advanced, event-driven, real-time data exchange
- Enhanced user-experience through a new longitudinal clinical patient record viewer
- Improved system performance by redesigning capabilities to take place beyond an integration engine and de-duplicating legacy processes
- Compliance with existing and upcoming patient access regulations
- Robust security and privacy protection
Our future-proofed infrastructure and population-based routing are being designed to support robust data exchange for patient centered decision making, care coordination, price transparency, quality & value and compliance.
Why is MiHIN Migrating to an Integrated Technology Platform?
- To improve data quality
- To modernize infrastructure
- To eliminate duplicative legacy systems
- To increase reliability and responsiveness of service
- To create the path for required FHIR transformations
- To bridge existing payer and future provider FHIR environments
- To provide a cloud native environment that’s optimized and has the highest levels of modern security
What is changing?
We are making the slow, steady migration away from the legacy environments that support some of our current solutions.
Participants utilizing HealthConnect (ie:VIPR, Results Delivery via Inbox, Solution Center, etc.) will be migrated to the Integrated Technology Platform and transitioned to a new Smart on FHIR longitudinal record viewer application.
Included in this new technology are multiple ways to query for patient information.
When is this happening?
Our slow and steady transition began in the Fall of 2022 and aims to be completed in 2025.
We understand the importance of a smooth transition to the Longitudinal Record and are committed to minimizing disruptions. For that reason, we have extended the planned deadline of the decommissioning of VIPR to the first quarter of 2025.
What can I expect from MiHIN?
Migration is a complex process. To mitigate impacts and risks, we will be using the following guiding principles:
- Commitment to communication and transparency
- Designing for optimal, least stakeholder/client disruptive processes
- Mitigating risk of downtime happening at wide scale by validating our migration procedure by beginning with a test feed (i.e. using synthetic patient data to test whether the environment is working)
- Providing opportunities for early adopters to pilot and kick the tires
- Understanding the best ways/means/time to deploy from our clients’ unique perspectives
- Lining up with stakeholders’ Smart on FHIR strategy
- Trainings and change management
What will MiHIN no longer support?
By upgrading, integrating and unifing all technology and interface engines, MiHIN’s focus is on optimizing and streamlining our processes.
MiHIN will not continue to offer translations of the provider codes to the NPI in submitted data. MiHIN will no longer be responsible for provisioning this unique identifier for healthcare providers.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandates the use of standardized identifiers in healthcare transactions. The NPI is one such standardized identifier, and its inclusion in laboratory data feeds helps ensure compliance with HIPAA regulations.
Including the NPI in data flows helps in avoiding errors related to misidentification of providers. This is important for maintaining the integrity and accuracy of healthcare data, especially in situations where multiple providers may be involved in a patient’s care.
Including NPI in data feeds is imperative for accurate provider identification, proper billing, compliance with regulations, and seamless information exchange in the healthcare ecosystem. It contributes to improved patient care coordination and helps prevent errors associated with provider.
What will MiHIN continue to support?
By upgrading, integrating and unifing all technology and interface engines, MiHIN’s focus is on optimizing and streamlining our processes.
MiHIN will continue providing the value-added service to the ADT and/or ORU feeds we receive from you by adding the appropriate OID (object identifier) for your organization(s) to the HL7 message.
ITP News/Updates
ITP News/Updates
Migration Milestones
MiHIN is working to complete this work in phases. During implementation, the legacy environment and ITP are running in parallel, which eliminates downtime and operational interruptions. Processes running in real-time can keep data continuously migrating and reduce risks.
Phase 1
Participant feeds flow directly into the new integrated technology platform and back out to the
customer’s historical interfaces. The client sends to the same connection point and continue to receive data from the same interface engine.
No VPN or Firewall changes required by customers.
A different type of ACK (an acknowledgement message) is to be received when sending data to MiHIN.
Phase 2
Our new clinical data (FHIR resource) repository, is installed in our development environment. Data flows are being validated.
Phase 3
Designing an upgraded longitudinal record viewer which is natively based on our FHIR repository and aggregates clinical data across our network, accelerating data analytics and meeting Cures Act regulations.