Sybase Inc. is expanding the data integration capabilities of its New Era of Networks E-Biz Impact integration server for the healthcare industry. Release 5.3, which will begin shipping later this month, includes features to help healthcare organizations comply with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act transaction standards.

New Era of Networks E-Biz Impact is used to integrate systems with disparate data and messaging formats. St. Luke's Hospital in Chesterfield, Mo., for example, has used the software since 1995 to link its myriad clinical, billing, and hospital information (including patient registration) systems with some 60 interfaces. The software supports a range of data and messaging types including electronic data interchange, the Health Level 7 standard used by many hospitals, and -- in the new release -- XML.

The new release will also support data and transaction standards mandated by HIPAA starting this October. It also has the ability to use Sybase's Process Server rules engine to handle HIPAA-regulated transactions. Release 5.3 includes improved message logging and auditing capabilities, and new monitoring, security, and configuration features. The software can also connect to a range of enterprise resource planning applications. Pricing starts at $100,000.

Jeff Graham, technology manager at St. Luke's, says release 5.3's built-in links to the Sybase database "are a very big deal" because they eliminate the need to develop custom interfaces. Graham says the software's ability to combine processes or tasks running in memory will reduce the workload of the hospital's Unix servers. While St. Luke's will likely install the software once it is available, Graham says the hospital won't need its HIPAA-related capabilities because it relies on a third-party clearing-house service to process external transactions.

Sybase acquired New Era of Networks Inc., a developer of application integration software, early last year as part of its effort to re-invent itself as a supplier of enterprise infrastructure and integration software

The number of IT products to help healthcare organizations comply with HIPAA privacy and transaction regulations has been growing recently. In June, for example, Informatica Corp. debuted data integration and transformation software that translates data from proprietary formats generated by legacy systems into HIPAA-compliant formats.