UST Global, a leading provider of information technology services and solutions for Global 1000 companies, today unveiled its plans to enter the burgeoning market of patient-centered health information. It will provide a palette of services based on the Blue Button initiative. UST Global also announced a strategic alliance with Amida Technology Solutions of Silver Spring, Maryland.
"Easy access to personal health information is unnecessarily difficult today," explained Bipin Thomas, president of UST Global's Health Group. "We believe that patient-centered access is the right model to exchange personal health information between clinical care providers, their customers, and their customers' caretakers. Blue Button has clearly emerged as the way to achieve that goal."
The Blue Button program was launched by President Obama in the summer of 2010 at a meeting of Disabled American Veterans. Today, according to White House estimates, "more than 150 million Americas today are able to use Blue Button–enabled tools to access their own health information from a variety of sources including healthcare providers, health insurance companies, medical labs, and state health information networks."
Earlier this week Amida announced the release of its first product, a healthcare software component based on Blue Button. Their Data Reconciliation Engine (DRE) enables data holders to create a longitudinal patient-centered record, regardless of the source or provenance of the information.
The DRE not only compiles disparate information into a universal Master Health Record, it also makes sure it is accurate. It allows patients and providers to identify and correct errors, as well as manually reconcile partial matches via a simple web interface.
"We are deeply honored that UST-Global has chosen us to help them to bring Blue Button solutions to the market," said Amida's CEO Peter L. Levin. Levin is the former chief technology officer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, where he spearheaded the development of the Blue Button personal health record. "Patient access to their personal health information access is explicitly called out in the Meaningful Use guidelines", he explained, "and will lower costs by reducing redundancy, and save lives by reducing errors".
"As a global leader in healthcare IT solutions, UST Global is constantly on the lookout for cutting-edge companies with excellent teams", said Sajan Pillai, CEO of UST-Global. "We believe that our industry will greatly benefit from Amida's leadership in patient-centered models of care, and were proud supporters of their product development."
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