WAYNE, PA – A new partnership of vendors hopes to provide applications that both providers and payers will be able to use to exchange information through regional healthcare information networks.

Called the CollaboraCare Consortium, the group comprises vendors that provide a variety of healthcare IT products and services. With Wayne, Pa.-based MEDecision serving as its general partner, the group hopes to add other vendors to its list.

The group is aiming to make all partners' applications interoperable, said John Capobianco, president and chief marketing officer of MEDecision. In fact, it's a stated goal that all partners must agree to, he said.

"We created a consortium so that we can speed up the integration process," he said. "We want to do it once instead of having customers pay for the same work over and over again. We want to make it easier for our clients to find qualified companies that have experience in working with RHIO markets."

The consortium includes eight partners, and it expects to add another five to 10 vendor partners this year, Capobianco said.

It's approaching companies that have products for physician and hospitals, he said, but some of those may not be able to participate because of limitations they face from legal restrictions.

"We will create strategic partnerships with some of the larger companies where they have such myriad legal issues that they can't join this type of partnership," Capobianco said. "We're also looking at a lot of the large service vendors and have been in conversation with them."

Current consortium members also include Cardtronic Technology, DrFirst, HealthTrio, HealthVision, Hx Technologies, iMetrikus and Wellogic.

While the consortium hasn't attracted a customer yet, Capobianco said it's had in-depth conversations with as many as 25 RHIO organizations. Its goal is to offer data organizations prepackaged integrated components that enable information exchange between payers and providers.

Efforts by vendors to offer applications to budding regional information networks are expected to grow, said Lee Barrett, newly named CEO of Claredi Corp., a Kaysville, Utah-based company that's also developing an offering to enable data exchange.

"This will be a challenge for the industry," Barrett said. "There will be a lot of players and a lot of initiatives."