Governor Jenniffer González Colón announced on Thursday the launch of the Puerto Rico Health Information Exchange (PRHIE), a platform that will allow patients' clinical information to be shared among providers and hospitals in Puerto Rico. The announcement came during the Annual Convention of the Puerto Rico Hospital Association, alongside Health Secretary Víctor M. Ramos Otero and Carlos Santiago, executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration (ASES) and the Medicaid Program.
According to the government, the PRHIE aims to ease access to patients' medical information, improve coordination of health services, and reduce duplicated tests and errors tied to missing clinical information. The governor said that after more than a decade of not complying with this initiative of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the government is formally joining the national interoperability movement through infrastructure built to collect, share, protect and standardize clinical data under strict federal privacy and security standards.
She said a medical emergency in Vieques, Utuado or San Juan should not depend on paperwork that did not arrive, adding that with the exchange 'the information travels with the patient.' González Colón said the project and contract were reviewed and approved by CMS and the Fiscal Oversight Board after about a year under consideration.
Santiago explained the PRHIE will not be a centralized database but an infrastructure for exchanging clinical information among participating organizations, with an active multisector advisory council and a transparent data governance framework.