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The agency charged with boosting health information exchange in California has announced two new grant programs targeting rural HIEs and innovations in data analytics. A notice sent out Jan. 25 by the California Health eQuality (CHeQ) program managed by the University of California-Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement (IPHI) says the Rural HIE Incentive Program seeks to establish an ongoing mechanism and structure through which rural medical communities may evaluate and contract with pre-selected HIE service providers.

The New Mexico Health Information Collaborative (NMHIC), the state’s health information exchange (HIE), has selected New Zealand-based Orion Health’s HIE platform to power the statewide exchange and expand the capabilities it offers to healthcare providers across New Mexico.

The Delaware Health Information Network (DHIN) has announced it will offer Direct Project messaging services to providers through AlliedHIE Company, a certified health information services provider (HISP) launched by Nashville-based Informatics Corporation of America (ICA).

I have been watching with interest the outcome of a recent announcement that the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE USA) (http://iheusa.org/) has contracted with ICSA Labs, a for-profit division of Verizon (https://www.icsalabs.com/) for certification of IHE profiles. On the surface, this sounds like a good thing, but dig deeper and it raises a number of interesting questions with respect to intent and motive.

The Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO), which runs the state’s health information exchange (HIE), has announced a partnership with the a large primary care practice association in the Denver area, which will add 175-plus practitioners to the exchange.