IRVINE, CA – Mirth Corporation, the leader in commercial open source healthcare information technology, announced today that the North Carolina Healthcare Information and Communication Alliance (NCHICA) has selected Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange (Mirth MUx) to achieve Nationwide Health Information Exchange (NHIN) connectivity.

The project is being funded through NCHICA's contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The project will enable the Western North Carolina (WNC) Health Network's Data Link to connect to the NHIN. The WNC Health Network is a mature health information exchange organization (HIO) that links 16 hospitals in the region. The purpose of the gateway project is to demonstrate how an established HIO can become a node on the NHIN and use the NHIN for connectivity with federal partners. NCHICA has been an active participant in the NHIN since inception, and this phase of the project will continue its role of incubating innovations in North Carolina.

"We are pleased to be working with Mirth on this important project for North Carolina," said Holt Anderson, executive director of NCHICA. "They have a proven track record of helping HIOs and health information exchanges connect to the NHIN with their low-cost, standards-based, open source software. It is our hope that this will serve as a prototype for other HIOs and HIEs to achieve NHIN interoperability. Our NHIN Gateway deployment will be complementary to enterprise, community and state-level projects."

"Mirth is pleased to be selected by NCHICA for this project," said Jon Teichrow, president of Mirth Corporation. "We add them to a growing list of organizations that have discovered that connection to the NHIN for safe and timely exchange of patient data need not be an expensive, slow, or technologically difficult endeavor. By taking time, cost and risk out of the process we help organizations achieve their aim of helping create a safer, more connected healthcare system."

Since its launch as the Mirth Project in 2006, Mirth Connect -- a core component of Mirth MUx -- has become the most widely downloaded open source software for healthcare data integration, with over 70,000 worldwide downloads and a user community numbering over 7,000 professionals. Mirth Connect supports all major healthcare data interchange standards, including HL7, X12, DICOM, NCPDP, and even XML.