3M Health Information Systems - 3M Opens Access to the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary under Agreement with U.S. Departments of Defens

“3M Health Information Systems announced today it will open access to the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary under an agreement with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary will provide the core technology to enable semantic interoperability for the joint DoD/VA integrated Electronic Health Record (iEHR), making it possible to share medical knowledge and secure patient data between care providers at U.S. military treatment facilities located around the world and VA Medical Centers. Access to actionable clinical information whenever and wherever care is delivered will enable safer, better coordinated, and higher quality care for the country’s 32 million veterans, active service members, and their families. Healthcare industry stakeholders could also benefit, as the agreement makes the 3M Healthcare Data Dictionary (3M HDD) software and terminology content openly available to hospitals, health systems, physician practices, payers, vendors, and public health agencies worldwide... Open access to the 3M HDD for U.S. healthcare providers will help accelerate implementation of electronic health records and help healthcare organizations achieve meaningful use standards established by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The 3M HDD enables clinical queries and analytics, and organizes healthcare data to support requirements under meaningful use. It provides the foundation for enhancing healthcare analytics, decision support, and business intelligence... All major healthcare standard terminologies are mapped into the 3M HDD, including SNOMED CT®, LOINC®, RxNorm®, ICD-9, and ICD-10. Pending approval from international standards development organizations, these standards will be included with the open access software for organizations and users who have appropriate authorization. Local terminologies are also mapped into the 3M HDD, allowing healthcare facilities to continue to collect data with existing information systems and then crosswalk this data to industry standards for semantic interoperability... 3M Health Information Systems pioneered the use of mapping in standardizing and normalizing data. 3M has mapped and maintained content for nearly 500 hospitals and clinics, including large integrated delivery networks and all DoD Military Treatment Facilities worldwide, and is active in standards and informatics organizations, such as Health Level 7 (HL7) and the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). 3M also has authored a comprehensive Medical Information Model for healthcare domains including: Pharmacy, Laboratory, Microbiology, Radiology, Dentistry, Problem List (Diagnosis and Procedure),and Admissions Discharge and Transfer (ADT).   Registration and complete information for accessing the 3M HDD is available at the new HDD Access web site, www.HDDaccess.com...”