New Mexico has designated the New Mexico Health Information Collaborative (NMHIC) as its official Health Information Exchange, a key step in the state's participation in the nation's plan to implement electronic medical records.

NMHIC will create an electronic infrastructure to connect New Mexico's health care providers through a contract with technology partner MedPlus, the healthcare information technology subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics, NMHIC said Tuesday.

MedPlus connects some of the nation's largest HIEs, including a third of the original National Health Information Network demonstration projects, one of which is the NMHIC.

"The New Mexico Health Information Collaborative has already built a solid foundation during the last several years, thus making it an ideal choice to help move us closer to the goal of quality health care for all at affordable prices," said New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in a statement.

NMHIC partner healthcare providers will have access to information including lab results, patient record summaries, radiology images, discharge summaries, medication history, and claims data. Several leading New Mexico healthcare provider are already participating in NHMIC.

MedPlus is using its Centergy platform to integrate health records for New Mexico. It includes Clinical Portal software to aggregate patient-specific data from multiple clinical systems and present information in a single, Web-based, HIPAA-compliant view at multiple inpatient and remote points of care. Centergy is built on Data Exchange Services for collecting, integrating, aggregating and distributing clinical data while keeping it behind the sponsoring organization's firewall.

Other parts of the U.S. are also moving forward on setting up Health Information Exchanges, including Washington, D.C., which is also basing its service on MedPlus.

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