Health IT gets Help from UT for Healthcare Interoperability

According to The Austin American Statesman, the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas (UT) is testing health IT to improve social services referral Interoperability between clinics and service providers. The goal of health IT is to make it easier for healthcare clinicians to refer patients to social services inside their EHR workflow. The agency can then inform the provider if the patient has been connected and is getting care, or whether it was unable to assist the patient.

Integrated Care Collaboration, an Austin-based charity, is assisting in the development of the Interoperability tool. People’s Community Clinic, an Austin-based federally qualified health centre (FQHC), and Integral Care, Travis County’s mental health authority, will test the device in early 2022. Dell Medical School plans to roll out health IT in El Paso and New Orleans in 2023, rather than solely in Central Texas, to ensure that it has a universal application.

The Interoperability project is being led by Anjum Khurshid, MD, PhD, associate professor and director of data integration in the department of population health at Dell Medical School. Dell Medical School is developing an app that will allow patients to log into all of their patient portals in one spot, according to authorities. Patients will be able to access all of their patient portal information, including social services referrals, using this tool.

Researchers are building health IT to reduce clinician strain by reducing the need to fill out the same information on various forms multiple times, according to officials. The clinic will be able to share all of the patient’s data to a variety of social service providers.