One Network, Multiple Carriers

Can you remember the days when having a phone meant you could only talk to people who used the same phone service as you?  Probably not.  By the time I was even born, this was already long on its way out.  It took some time to break the monopoly up, but it did happen, so we could even show that you didn't have to have everything under the same roof.

Carequality, SureScripts, Commonwell, DirectTrust, Nate, various HISP vendors ...

These are the names of organizations deploying the on ramps to the patient health information network.  The carriers if you will.

Already Carequality and Commonwell have announced that they are bridging between their networks.  HISP to HISP connectivity was built into the Direct protocol, but to fully make it work, we had to have trust frameworks ... e.g., Nate and Direct Trust.  There's still concerns that some Direct networks cannot talk to each other, and we sure as hell still have a problem with our "phone books" (the directories of provider addresses).

Let's go broader.  Let's make sure that we can have the carrier of our choice, but can access anyone anywhere.  Let's make sure that the network connecting patients and providers is a true network. Let's make finding how to connect to any provider as easy as it is to find them on Google.

Otherwise, we might as well spell network with two o's.

   Keith