New Collaboration Will Give Privacy and Security Controls to Michigan Patients

LANSING, Mich., Nov. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services (MiHIN) is pleased to announce completion of an agreement with HIPAAT International Inc., a leading provider of consent management and auditing software for healthcare, to provide HIPAAT's software services statewide. This agreement promises Michigan patients the opportunity to control the sharing of their electronic Protected Health Information (PHI) based on personal preferences and will allow patients to view a record of every instance of access to their PHI.

Under the agreement, HIPAAT will provide its software services through MiHIN's service-oriented architecture (SOA) to create consistent privacy capabilities, manage consent and opt-out preferences, easily integrate with sub-state HIEs and EMR/EHRs, and implement real-time access control policies. MiHIN will also deploy HIPAAT auditing services enabling the creation of audit records of access to PHI, producing mandated audit reports and allowing patients the ability to request disclosure reports for their own electronic health records.

HIPAAT's President and COO Kel Callahan stated, "Tim Pletcher, MiHIN's Executive Director, approached us several years ago about our standards-based consent management and auditing software, recognizing the benefits a comprehensive, centralized solution would have for all patients in Michigan. This is now becoming a reality. It is our pleasure to have MiHIN pioneer the delivery of a statewide solution in a cost effective manner."

Michigan Health Information Network Associate Director, Jeff Livesay said of the agreement, "We are pleased to add HIPAAT's state-of-the-art consent management and powerful auditing capabilities to the suite of services shared statewide by MiHIN. The HIPAAT suite will provide Michigan residents with a secure, private way to manage and ensure the privacy of their personal health information in the new era of electronic health information exchange. Since electronic records will be shared strictly according to patients' permission and privacy preferences, those records will be more accurate and reliable, allowing a higher standard of care."

The privacy rules are managed using HIPAAT's Privacy eSuite, which supports HL7 CDA R2, IHE ATNA and OASIS XACML/XSPA standards to allow for the highest levels of privacy and security. The consent management is then complemented with specific auditing analysis.

About Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN) Shared Services
The Michigan Health Information Network (MiHIN) is Michigan's initiative to improve health care quality, efficiency, and patient safety through the sharing of electronic health information, while reducing costs. MiHIN is the official state designated entity for health information exchange across Michigan and the future integration with the eHealth Exchange. MiHIN is a Michigan nonprofit entity, functioning as a public and private collaboration between the State of Michigan, sub-state Health Information Exchanges, payers, providers, and patients. For more information please visit www.mihin.org.

About HIPAAT Inc.
HIPAAT (hip • at) provides consent management and privacy auditing solutions to healthcare. Our SOA-based software balances consumer information privacy with the clinical need to access personal health information. Our interoperable, standards-based approach enables stakeholders at all levels of health data sharing to implement, audit and enforce patient, organizational and jurisdictional privacy policies. For more information, visit www.hipaat.com

SOURCE Michigan Health Information Network