Medical Data Sharing: Establishing Trust in Health Information Exchange

Health information exchange (HIE) 'allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists, other health care providers and patients to appropriately access and securely share a patient's vital medical information electronically--improving the speed, quality, safety and cost of patient care' (HealthIT.gov, 2014). The greatest gain in the use of HIE is the ability to achieve interoperability across providers that, except for the care of a given patient, are unrelated. But, by its very nature, HIE also raises concern around the protection and integrity of shared, sensitive data. Trust is a major barrier to interoperability.