Go to ScienceSoft Global
Custom Health Information Exchange Portal (HIE)
Architecture, Development Steps, & Costs
In custom healthcare software development since 2005, ScienceSoft builds robust, regulatory-compliant systems to streamline secure data exchange among hospitals, public health institutions, labs, long-term care facilities, pharmacies, and other entities involved in patient care.
Contributors
Healthcare IT Consultant, ScienceSoft
Senior Solution & Integration Architect, ScienceSoft
A health information exchange portal is needed to enable the secure exchange of patient health, demographics, and insurance data among the involved parties. Such solutions help healthcare organizations enhance care coordination, reduce medical errors and redundant testing, and improve the quality of care.
A custom HIE portal is a popular choice when highly varied data exchange standards and protocols must be unified for different institutions' software systems.
- Implementation time: 6 to 18+ months.
- Common integrations: EHR or EMR, LIMS or LIS, RIS, PACS.
- Costs: $400,000–$2,000,000+, depending on the solution's complexity. Use our free online calculator to get a custom quote from our consultants.
HIE Market is to Reach $4.2 Billion by 2031
According to Verified Market Research, the growth is propelled by the increasing focus on healthcare operability, which is required to reduce redundant testing and enhance patient safety. Some of the hindering factors include cybersecurity concerns and the complexity of regulatory compliance.
Key Capabilities of a Health Information Exchange Portal
Multi-source data integration
An HIE portal integrates patient data from multiple touchpoints, including hospitals, clinics, and labs. Such solutions standardize data exchange formats and protocols to ensure seamless data sharing between different EHRs/EMRs and other systems the involved institutions use. An HIE portal can support different communication methods with the EHR, LIS, and other systems, for instance, via TCP/IP over VPN, secure web services, secure FTP, or secure email.
Directed data exchange
HIE software allows care providers to securely send patient information to healthcare professionals from other institutions. For instance, a primary care provider can send patient lab test results and medication history when referring a patient to a specialty medical center, or a healthcare organization can send quality measure reports to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Query-based data exchange
Healthcare professionals can use an HIE portal to search and retrieve patient information (e.g., details on hospital admission and discharges, laboratory orders and results, radiology reports, and medication history). They can search patients by name, date of birth, social security number, or other parameters and apply filters (e.g., by provider, diagnosis). An HIE portal can also generate a single continuity of care document (CCD) that consolidates a patient’s most relevant administrative, demographic, and clinical information.
Notifications
An HIE portal can send alerts to clinicians about patient admission, discharge, or transfer (ADT), ER visits, new test results, and other time-sensitive clinical events. Clinicians can request daily or real-time notifications on behalf of their patients or patients can request that notifications be sent to the provider of their choice. Alerts can be sent through an HIE portal, via an SFTP site or VPN/TLS, direct messaging within an EHR, or other messaging service.
Patient access to health records and consent management
An HIE portal can provide patients with access to their health records and allow them to manage consent to data sharing. The scope of patients’ rights depends on region-specific data protection regulations and each HIE’s rules. In some solutions, patients can opt in and out, specify which providers can access their data, revoke access, and more. In other solutions, consent can be fully managed by healthcare providers on patients’ behalf. Such HIEs may offer downloadable opt-out form templates and sample language for notifying patients about privacy practices.
Security management
An HIE portal should provide mechanisms for personal data protection in line with relevant regulations like HIPAA or GDPR. These include the encryption of data at rest and in transit, data anonymization, role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA). An HIE portal should also enable HIPAA-compliant Direct Secure Messaging (DSM) for encrypted communication between healthcare providers. Additionally, an HIE portal should maintain an audit trail that records each patient data query, access, and modification to ensure accountability, detect unauthorized activity, and support compliance audits.
Analytics and reporting
HIE portals can have dashboards that help track different metrics related to care quality and costs. The dashboards can also allow users to segment patients into groups, e.g., by demographics and health conditions. Systems with more advanced analytics can send alerts (e.g., on abnormal lab results or potential medication interactions) and build forecasts on disease progression trends, resource utilization, and other aspects.
What Can a HIE Portal Improve
By ensuring access to comprehensive patient records and enabling direct secure messaging, HIE portals help avoid duplicate procedures and promote continuity of care. They also help coordinate healthcare providers' efforts; for example, healthcare professionals can receive alerts on care transitions and patient status updates in the portal.
Clinically-integrated revenue cycle (CIRC) management
A HIE portal promotes collaboration between clinical and financial staff by accumulating patient health information as well as revenue and billing management data. This helps optimize revenue cycle management, improve the quality of clinical documentation, and enhance claim management processes.
Medical coding and classification
Providing access to consolidated data on diagnostics and treatment, an HIE portal improves the accuracy of medical coding and service classification and streamlines coding quality reviews.
Public health reporting
HIE is a reliable tool for reporting public health data to governmental agencies, supporting efforts in immunization tracking, disease surveillance, and outbreak prevention.
See How ScienceSoft’s Clients Benefit From Custom HIE Solutions
5 results for:
HIE System and a Patient App for Secure PHI Sharing
ScienceSoft developed a HIPAA-compliant HIE solution to securely store, access, and transmit patient data within a healthcare facility and with third-party organizations.
PHI De-Identification and Sharing Software for Gulf-Based HIE Provider
ScienceSoft has augmented the client's software development team to help deliver a data de-identification and sharing module for an HIE platform.
BI Solution for a US Leading HIE Vendor
ScienceSoft delivered a BI solution that facilitates health issues management. The system enables health issues segmentation, demographics data exploration, and issue probability and prevention analysis.
Managed Testing of HIE Software Integrated with Multiple EHRs
ScienceSoft rendered managed testing services to a US company providing software solutions for hospitals, pharmacies, and assisted living organizations.
Mobile Care Coordination App for an HIE Provider to Increase Patient Engagement
ScienceSoft created a mobile care coordination app that creates a continuum of care by connecting patients with their caregivers across organizations and specialties.
Sample Architecture of a HIE Portal
Below, ScienceSoft’s solution architects provide an overview of an HIE portal built according to a distributed/federated model where all providers store data in their own systems but have agreed to share it with other institutions via an HIE solution.
Users can interact with the HIE portal via different means. For example, healthcare providers can access it via EMR/EHR, and patients can use dedicated portals. Healthcare professionals send requests for directed and query-based data exchange, while patients can view their health records and manage consent by filling in opt-in and -out forms.
A number of services within the HIE backend are responsible for the secure transfer of accurate information.
Registry and directory service is responsible for identifying individuals. Different institutions may assign a medical record number to each patient or keep a master patient index (MPI) database. An HIE portal’s algorithms standardize various registry and directory methods.
Identity matching service helps match records with a certain individual. The mechanisms can include exact matching (e.g., when the name, birth date, and gender coincide), ad-hoc weighing (when certain fields are given higher importance), fuzzy logic (when an exact match can be ignored in case there is a typo or some other discrepancy), and mechanisms powered by neural networks that identify patterns in data. Identity matching processes are often built according to established standards (e.g., HITSP Patient ID Cross-Referencing Transaction (PIX) Package and HITSP Patient Demographics Query Transaction (PDQ) for the US).
After an individual is found and matched with a certain record, the record locator service identifies where this record is located.
Identity management service ensures that only authorized users can access patient records. It includes a number of mechanisms for protecting patient health information (PHI), like user authorization, authentication, and access control.
Consent management service guarantees that data is shared according to patient's preferences (e.g., specific types of data are available only to several institutions within the common HIE environment).
Secure data transfer service utilizes the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) standard to enable secure data transmission between the backend and presentation layer.
Data exchange service ensures proper usage of terminology code and vocabulary during data exchange. For example, a hospital uploads a lab test order with LOINC codes. If the info from this record is needed for billing purposes, the system should be able to transform it into CPT (Current Procedural Terminology) codes.
An HIE can feature finance-centered services. One of the most popular ones is the revenue cycle management service. Depending on the use case, it can be responsible for multiple actions, e.g., insurance verification, charge capture, diagnosis- and procedure-specific coding (ICD, CPT, HCPCS).
A data warehouse (DWH) aggregates all patient data and arranges it in a way suitable for BI querying and reporting. The data analytics service interacts with the DWH to provide ad-hoc and scheduled reports (e.g., on finance management and quality management) and enhances data normalization (e.g., to eliminate data redundancy).
The actions in a HIE portal are powered by an operational database with a database management system and a metadata catalog.
Custom HIE Development: Key Steps
Custom health information exchange portal development is needed to accommodate diverse data exchange formats and standards of the involved organizations, integrate custom-built and legacy systems, and support unique workflows. With 19 years of experience in developing custom healthcare solutions, ScienceSoft outlines key steps for successful HIE portal implementation.
1.
Business analysis and requirement engineering
At this step, business analysts communicate with physicians, lab managers, HIE portal technical administrators, and other potential users to gather details that will help shape functional and non-functional solution requirements. For instance, the experts need to find out the specifics of data exchange processes, including the involved entities, systems, data formats and exchange protocols, user roles, patient consent management processes, and more. The analysts also outline features that will ensure system compliance with data protection regulations (e.g., HIPAA, PDPL, GDPR), security standards (e.g., ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 2770), and other requirements.
ScienceSoft
2.
Design of data exchange and transformation logic
The experts analyze the documented data exchange standards (e.g., HL7, DICOM, FHIR), terminology standards (e.g., LOINC, SNOMED CT), and data formats (e.g., XML, JSON) used in the involved provider systems. The specialists then develop a model and mechanisms for standardizing data exchange processes.
At ScienceSoft, we often refer to guidelines and specifications from reputable organizations that shape the standards of healthcare data information exchange, such as Technical Frameworks by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and Interoperability Standards Advisory (ISA) by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONS). That way, we can ensure that the developed software aligns with industry best practices, complies with the relevant regulations, and enables consistent data representation. For instance, when developing an HIE portal for a care management solution provider, we followed Cross-Enterprise Document Sharing (XDS.b) — an IHE interoperability standard applicable to enterprises that belong to one or more XDS Affinity Domains (e.g., nationwide EHR, specialized or disease-oriented care). The standard helped us ensure consistent health information exchange between various healthcare entities, such as labs, care providers, senior housing, and long-term care facilities.
3.
Technical design
Following the requirements gathered during business analysis, solution architects design system components that will support the required workflows and choose the techs that will satisfy scalability, performance, availability, and other requirements at the best cost-to-benefit ratio.
ScienceSoft
4.
UX and UI design
UX and UI designers create navigation workflows and visual elements that promote an intuitive user experience. These can include drag-and-drop widgets that let users customize their dashboards, color-coded notifications, and rich data filtering and sorting capabilities (e.g., hiding data that is already available in the EHR system, showing data that arrived after a certain period). If a mobile app is planned, UI designers work on simplified interfaces for smaller screens.
ScienceSoft
5.
Development and testing
Testing and development teams work in parallel, which makes it possible to detect and fix issues before they become major problems. At ScienceSoft, developers try to find ways to balance cost optimization and software quality. For instance, they can utilize ready-made components of reputable cloud providers (e.g., Microsoft, AWS, Google), implement DevOps practices, and choose feasible QA automation. In our practice, such an approach helps cut development costs by up to 78%.
ScienceSoft
5.
Deployment and support
The experts integrate the developed HIE portal with the involved systems and monitor the performance of the live solution to identify and fix any remaining flaws. Developers provide the organization with user manuals, maintenance guides, descriptions of data governance and security frameworks, and other software documentation. At ScienceSoft, we fix major software issues free of charge according to the one-month post-launch warranty.
ScienceSoft
How Much Does IT Cost to Develop a Custom HIE Portal?
The cost of custom HIE portal development may range from $400,000 to $2,000,000+. The major cost factors include the complexity of data types and integrations as well as the scope and sophistication level of solution capabilities, including data search, patient consent management, and analytics features.
|
|
Basic solution |
Advanced solution |
|---|---|---|
|
Types of data shared
|
|
|
|
Integration complexity
|
|
|
|
Number of involved organizations/facilities
?
Hospitals, labs, pharmacies, health insurers, etc. |
Up to 2,000 |
Up to 5,000 |
|
Patient consent management
|
|
|
|
Number of supported users
?
E.g., physicians, social workers, nurses. The more users there are, the more scalable the solution should be. |
100–5,000 |
5,000–1,000,000 |
|
Alerts and notifications
|
|
|
|
Data search functionality
|
|
|
|
Analytics and reporting
|
|
|
|
Costs
|
$400,000–$800,000 |
$800,000–$2,000,000+ |
Get a Ballpark Cost Estimate for Your Case
Why Choose ScienceSoft to Support Your HIE Initiative?
- Since 2005 in healthcare IT.
- 150+ successful projects in the domain.
- Experience in achieving compliance with data protection regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, PDPL, PIPEDA and security standards, including ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO/IEC 27701.
- Proficiency in healthcare data exchange standards, including HL7, CDA, XDS, DICOM, TEFCA, and more.
- #1 in Healthcare Software Development according to the Black Book™ 2023 market survey.
- Quality and security management systems backed up by ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certifications.
Our Awards and Recognitions
Listed among Healthcare IT Service Leaders in 2022 and 2024
Growing faster than Amazon, Google, and ServiceNow
Recognized for reliability and trustworthiness
Recognized by Health Tech Newspaper awards for the third time
Top Healthcare IT Developer and Advisor by Black Book™ survey 2023
Best in class in medical device connectivity (2023)
A top outsourcing provider for three consecutive years
ISO 13485-certified quality management system
ISO 27001-certified security management system
What makes ScienceSoft different
Driving success in healthcare IT projects no matter what
ScienceSoft develops healthcare IT solutions that reduce care delivery costs and improve outcomes, no matter the challenges posed by diverse expectations of medical staff, shifting priorities, and resistance to change.
