ALEXANDRIA, VA – MEDS-ED Link, a project of the Northern Virginia Regional Health Information Organization (NoVaRHIOsm) in conjunction with Inova Health System and GE Healthcare, recently launched to provide emergency docs at the hospital with access to patient medication histories.

Emergency physicians at Inova Alexandria Hospital, a 318-bed community hospital in Alexandria, Va., will be able to send a query through the MEDS-ED system to existing prescription data repositories such as Surescripts. The query, based on the patient's demographic data, will be carried through a secure technology infrastructure designed by GE Healthcare's global eHealth division and implemented by the Inova Health System technology team. Physicians will verify the resulting medication history report with each patient.

Ryan Bosch, MD, CMIO, Inova Health System, conducted a four-step demo of MEDS-ED Link during the project's launch last month.
1. Consent and Demographics: This step will identity and register the patient and manage consent.
2. Medication and History Query: This step will request medication lists from different sources like pharmacies and payers. These medications will be in the database if the patient's insurer has paid for the prescription, Bosch explained.  He says they expect 80 of 100 patient visits to have a MEDS-ED response.
3. Other Data query: This step will include an electronic location for the data.  It will give the data a serial number so that it can be read, stored by the computer in a structured way. Future phases of this will include the File of Life Clinical Summaries, or continuity of care document for the patient.
4. Medication History Response: This step brings the data right into the electronic health record. It puts the data into the context of the note and patient care environment, which Bosch says is really "key."
Having access to accurate patient medication lists will allow physicians to better "practice medicine in the setting of knowledge," as Bosch puts it.

"The more accurate and timely the information at our disposal, the more tailored and beneficial our response can be," said Martin Brown, medical director of Emergency Medicine, Inova Alexandria Hospital. "NoVaRHIO's MEDS-ED Link will give us faster and more reliable access to vital prescription history data during a time of great stress for patients and their families."

"I am very excited about this project," said Cindi B. Jones, director, Virginia Health Reform Initiative. Although there are still lots of pieces that need to come, "just knowing what medication they are on is critical," she said after recounting a story about her own mother's (who has Parkinson's disease) multiple visits to the ER.

"The system has been designed to be compatible with emergency department workflows where time is of the essence," explained Earl Jones, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare's eHealth business. "We see this as a strong first step in our pledge to provide innovative information technologies to make fully functional health data exchange a reality in northern Virginia and beyond."

NoVaRHIO is providing funding for the two-year pilot, supported in part by a grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia. Future project goals include adding other hospitals and hospital systems to the MEDS-ED Link project, as well as incorporating laboratory and radiology data into the medical history report, officials added.

"By combining the global expertise of GE Healthcare with Inova's commitment to patient care and safety, NoVaRHIO is extremely proud to facilitate this first step toward more efficient and reliable access to critical health data," said Phil Reilly, NoVaRHIO board chairman and chief financial officer at KOL Bio-Medical Instruments.

Eugene Huang, senior adviser to Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, said during the project's launch that he sees MEDS-ED serving as a model for the rest of the country.

The state of Virginia has currently concluded an extended plan (six months) for a state health information exchange, which it recently submitted to the ONC for review, says Kim Barnes, director, office of Health Information Technology, Virginia Department of Health. She says the good and bad news is that Virginia will be the first state to be reviewed by the ONC through the extended planning period.