Chuck Christian, VP of Technology & Engagement, IHIE, Chapter 2

In today’s healthcare IT world, there’s a whole lot of talk about interoperability — and unfortunately, there’s also a whole lot of misunderstanding, says Chuck Christian, VP of Technology and Engagement with the Indiana Health Information Exchange. He believes that if the industry wants to make real strides in achieving this Holy Grail, it’s time to start clearing the air.

Recently we spoke with Christian, who has more than 20 years of CIO experience under his belt, about the difference between what’s being reported about interoperability and what’s really happening in the trenches. We also discuss the most common requests IHIE receives from providers (and how they’re working to fulfill them); how his organization is leverage the knowledge of students to de-identify data; the discussions he believes CIOs need to have with vendors; and why, all things considered, he’s still optimistic about the future of healthcare IT.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Geo-mapping clinical data with SDOH to allocate resources

* “There’s a really good opportunity.”

* Indiana HIMSS’ “datathon”

* Interoperability myths: “Data is being moved in a variety of ways”

* The fax-to-EHR option

* “Is the information coming from a trusted source?”

* Liability concerns: “We need to have those conversations.”



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Bold Statements

Those are the type of things we should be able to do with this level of data. It doesn’t have to be identified. It can be de-identified, and you start looking at where services need to be, what services need to be offered, where the patient populations are that could benefit from another clinic, and where are we putting our limited dollars.

If you’re going to define it as data flowing unencumbered without special effort from one EMR to the other, then that’s true — it’s not occurring, for a variety of reasons. But it’s not because nobody wants to share the information.

Are the EMRs able to consume everything that we send to them? No, and if you talk to some physicians, they don’t want the data to come in automatically and load in their EMRs and jump into their workflows, because they don’t believe that they need to see everything.

We’re moving all this data around, but we’re not thinking about what kind of potential liability that we may be causing, because the tort reforms are not being modified to go along with this new mass of information.

Those are conversations we’re not having that will make people more cautious about what information is shared and how they use that information.

Gamble:  The use of social determinants in health is really interesting, and it’s something that I think every organization is going to want to be able to do, but it’s getting all the steps in place first.

Christian:  Right, and I think that we need to learn. Brian Dickson, who is a researcher at the Indiana School of Public Health and also has a joint seat at the Regenstrief Institute, did some work last year geo-mapping the clinical data with some social determinants of health to see if you could identify where the need might be for resources around public health. I think that’s another really good opportunity for us to start looking at these multiple datasets we have and being able to make those determinations.

I’ll give you an example. The Indiana chapter of HIMSS this year was the host chapter for the Midwest conference where all the states in the Midwest get together every year. One of the things that we have in Indiana is the MPH or Management Performance Hub. It just recently got codified by the Indiana Sta...