For more information and to nominate members please go to: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MiHIN_Vendor_Team

A successful approach used in other Health Information Exchange (HIE) projects is to engage both stakeholder IT resources and a broad base of Health Information Technology (HIT) and HIE vendors in the design and standards setting process. We are calling this team the Vendor Technical Collaboration Team . In some HIE projects this team might be merged with the Technical Workgroup. However to mitigate any conflict of interest we have decided that we should keep this team separate from the MiHIN Technical Workgroup which will be creating requirements that would eventually become part of an RFP that some of these vendors might bid on. The work of this team will ensure that any design work done by the Technical Workgroup can be implemented by a large majority of the HIT and HIE vendors.

Charter

The focus of this Vendor Technical Collaboration Team will be to assist the MiHIN Technical Workgroup and the Project Control Office (PCO) in the development of the MiHIN Backbone architecture, interoperability standards, system security, shared services definition and implementation.

Why do we need a Vendor Technical Collaboration Team?

• The nature of this project is to create a backbone and state-wide Health Information Exchange infrastructure that is capable of allowing any vendor to interoperate as long as they follow national and state-wide standards
• The success of this backbone hinges on its ability to interoperate with broad array of stakeholder and vendor systems.
• While there are some national standards most of them are developed to be vendor and architecture agnostic. Applying these standards to a particular architecture takes significant work.
• By getting a number of vendor organizations to develop a consensus on how to implement specific functions and services of the backbone we ensure higher interoperability and encourage more competition for specific services going forward
• There is strong precedence for this at the national and at state levels
• The ONC is looking for states and regions to develop standards and submit them for national review and acceptance

Goals of the MiHIN Vendor Technical Collaboration Team

To assist the MiHIN Consultants in:

• the design of the MiHIN Backbone technical architecture
• recommending approaches for the implementation of the backbone
• defining the interoperability standards that should be implemented for the backbone and the integration with all community HIE organizations and EHR vendors
• the definition of the terminology (nomenclature) standards that should be implemented for the backbone
• the development of security standards and processes for the backbone
• the development of shared services definitions and technology deployment
• assisting in the backbone implementation and testing during implementation

Participants

• Co-chairs and Voting Members of the MiHIN Technology Workgroup
• MiHIN Project Control Office Consulting Team (Team Leadership)
• Key State of Michigan Department Staff
• Backbone or HIE Vendors Technical Staff
• EHR Vendors Technical Staff
• Select technical resources from stakeholder organizations

Process for Forming the Vendor Technical Collaboration Team

The Vendor Collaboration Team will be assembled and facilitated by the MiHIN Dewpoint/S2A consulting team. The selection process will encourage broad vendor participation to meet the goals described above. Each of the 30 RFI respondent organizations will be contacted and encouraged to nominate a member of their organization to participate. Other organizations that we know of who can add to the process will also be invited. We will also post this on the MiHIN and Dewpoint web sites and ask for open nominations.

Nominations will be done online via Survey Monkey. Vendors will have 10 working days to respond before we begin meetings but others members can be added later. Please see the Criteria for Selecting Vendors and Guidelines for Membership below.

Criteria for Selecting Vendors

1. Vendors are defined as those organizations that currently have HIT or HIE products, implement open source HIE products, or develop software for interoperable healthcare services and market and sell these products or services
2. Vendors may have full service HIE products or individual products such as security services, master patient indices, messaging gateways or other products
3. Vendors who re-sell other vendors products generally will not be allowed unless they provide significant value-added services such as software enhancements that promote interoperability
4. Vendors must be CCHIT certified or for those products not yet covered by CCHIT certification they must demonstrate commitment to national standards for Health Information Technology interoperability
5. Vendors who have been actively involved in national and regional HIE standards efforts are encouraged to participate
6. Vendors with operating HIE systems being used by Regional Health Information Organizations (RHIOs) or backbone products used by national, state or regional consortiums are encouraged to participate
7. Consultant organizations (other than the PCO consultant team) will not be allowed unless they meet one of the other vendor criteria above
8. Vendors will not be able to develop system requirements and will not be voting members of any MiHIN Workgroup
9. Michigan stakeholder organizations that have existing technology which may be leveraged for the MiHIN are not considered Vendors for the purposes of this process, thus they may be voting members of the MiHIN workgroups.
10. In some cases more than one representative from an organization may be allowed to participate if they bring additional skills to the team.

Guidelines for Membership

1. This is not a sales activity and no vendor sales staff will be allowed.
2. While broad participation from Technical Workgroup and vendors is highly desirable membership will be limited to individuals who bring strong technical skills and specific knowledge to the team.
3. Each member must be impartial in their work on this Collaboration Team in much the same manner as working on development of national standards.
4. Members will be asked to complete a Conflict of Interest and Intellectual Property form with Dewpoint/S2a which will describe their affiliations and protect any intellectual property that they may expose during the course of these sessions.
5. Members will be expected to contribute to the work by performing some limited work assignments such as reviewing and commenting on documents, collecting data to be shared with the team and other tasks. In general the requirement for participation will be limited to about 8 hours per month. Some members may be asked to volunteer to complete more extensive work assignments but this will be voluntary.
6. Vendor organizations may nominate one or more individuals for participation on the Collaboration Team however the Collaboration Team leadership will decide on individual participation.
7. Participation is limited to individuals not organizations. Organizations may not substitute at will for individual members but rather can nominate others for membership.
8. Participation by individuals from vendor organizations will not enhance nor hinder a vendor's opportunity to be selected for any State of Michigan or other MiHIN contracts.
9. Any member, as determined by the Collaboration Team leadership, who is not following these guidelines, may be asked to leave the team.

Updated 2-25-10

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