OREANDA-NEWS.  February 22, 2012. Fujitsu, the market leader in document imaging scanners, and Inofile, experts in document interoperability, today announced that the two companies will showcase new document imaging solutions designed to facilitate meeting Meaningful Use Stage 1 requirements and anticipated requirements for Stage 2, as defined by the Office of the National Coordinator. The joint solution, which runs on a Fujitsu ScanSnap N1800 or ScanSnap fi-6010 network scanner loaded with Inofile software, will be demonstrated at the 2012 Annual HIMSS Conference & Exhibition in the Interoperability Showcase in Las Vegas, February 21-23 booth #11000 (the Healthstory POD), in Hall G, and in the main expo hall at Fujitsu booth #4834.

The anticipated criteria for meeting the first stage of Phase 2 meaningful use requirements will include the use of the Clinical Document Architecture (CDA®) Consolidation Guide as one of its primary requirements. The CDA format for Unstructured Documents (similar to XDS-SD under current guidelines) was first pioneered by Fujitsu, Inofile, and the members of the Health Story Project, a collaborative of healthcare vendors, providers and associations, and is now the industry standard for exchanging unstructured documents between healthcare providers and across systems. Using internationally recognized and universally accepted HL7 guidelines, hospitals, physician practices and every facet within the entire Continuum of Care can now exchange patient information either directly or across any Health Information Exchange (HIE) without the need for custom integration or development resources. It is estimated that up to 60% of a patient's complete narrative can exist in unstructured documents that often reside outside Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems, which is why establishing a means to manage and exchange this information rest at the core of interoperability.

Today, the Fujitsu network scanners with Inofile software are the only solutions available on the market that have been tested and proven effective at exchanging information across multiple systems through its participation in the 2011 IHE North America Connectathon, the healthcare IT industry's only large-scale interoperability testing event which took place in Chicago, Illinois in October. The Connectathon provided detailed validation of the participants' interoperability and compliance with IHE profiles and offered vendors a unique opportunity for connectivity testing -- removing barriers to integration that would otherwise have to be dealt with at the customer's expense. The Fujitsu ScanSnap N1800 Network Scanner and ScanSnap fi-6010N iScanner loaded with Inofile software demonstrated the ability to connect to nearly 50 unique EHRs and HIEs without significant customization or development at the event.

Network Scanning: Helping to Achieve Meaningful Use Interoperability

For the majority of healthcare providers in the U.S., most of a patient’s full health narrative exists in paper form. There are 1.2 billion new documents created annually in healthcare, and that number is predicted to grow despite the increasing adoption of EMR software designed to make hospitals and practices paperless. This is the primary driver for the dramatic growth in sales of document scanning technology over the last several years. But there is a major difference between simply making images of documents versus turning them into “actionable” or useable data. Capturing the full patient narrative from these document images requires applying a contextual framework in order to make them meaningful. And the process to do so must be quick and easy, or it will not fit in a busy clinical setting.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap network scanners equipped with Inofile ChartMD software offer new tools to make digitizing documents simple without the need for training. This solution offers enhanced security features to combat the threat of data compromise, and the ability to seamlessly integrate within a company’s existing network infrastructure which allows users to easily scan and share information across the internal and external networks.

The Inofile interface on the Fujitsu network scanners allow hospitals, clinics, and other care providers to scan a batch of documents, perform a quality assurance check of the documents on the touch screen, index the documents with a few simple keystrokes, and upload the documents to a content repository, EHR or HIE without having to be tied to a workstation. This means critical clinical documents can be added to the electronic patient record in seconds without having to be added to a queue for scanning at the end of the shift, day, or week. It also means secure two-way exchange of information across multiple systems, including HIEs, EMRs or even personal health record databases.