MO Dept. of Social Services announces $13.8M Fed Grant for Statewide HIT Adoption

OCI Contributes to MO-HITECH Strategic and Operational Planning Process

St. Louis, MO - OCI has been an active participant and contributor to the Missouri State Strategic and Operational plans for a Secure Health Information Exchange (HIE). This week the State of Missouri Department of Social Services, through its Missouri Office of Health Information Technology (MO-HITECH), announced that the state has just received notice of $13.8 million in federal funding to help health care professionals adopt electronic health records (EHRs) and share health information electronically among providers.

An HIE ensures health care providers have access to all the clinical information, including EHRs, they require at the point of care. OCI is currently engaged in a health information exchange pilot project that leverages the federally funded NHIN CONNECT and other open source software products. OCI is using the experiences of the pilot to validate the architecture and technology approaches for the statewide HIE. Jeff Schmitz, a member of OCI's technical staff, contributor to NHIN CONNECT, and participant in the MO-HITECH Technical Infrastructure work group, is leading the pilot project.

Steve Totten, OCI Partner commented on the award: "We are pleased with the announcement of the federal funding because it will accelerate the adoption of statewide HIE technology. Our development efforts are aimed at making it secure, inclusive, dependable, interoperable, scalable, and affordable."

Dr. Ebrahim Moshiri, OCI founder and CEO, also commented: "We are excited about this opportunity to collaborate closely with other stakeholders in Missouri. Our solution is based upon federally established standards and designed from the ground up to scale and inter-operate. These cannot be afterthoughts."