Oracle said Monday that it plans to become part of a new federally supported healthcare network that will facilitate the sharing of patient data between clinics, hospitals and insurance companies.

TakeAway points:

• Oracle said Monday that it plans to become part of a new nationwide healthcare network that will facilitate the sharing of patient data between clinics, hospitals and insurance providers.
• The network is called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement and aims to standardize the legal and technical requirements for sharing patient data on a large scale.
• Oracle is the latest major electronic health record vendor to signal interest in TEFCA, joining competitors such as Epic Systems.

Oracle requests to join Epic and others

The network, called the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, or TEFCA, was launched in December. Oracle, which acquired medical records giant Cerner for $28 billion in 2022, is the latest major vendor to support TEFCA, joining its arch-rival Epic Systems.

Oracle needs to be approved to join TEFCA, but its interest in doing so helps bolster the nascent network’s credibility. It also suggests that TEFCA may succeed in introducing a new standard for data sharing practices in the healthcare industry.

Sharing medical records between different hospitals, clinics and healthcare organizations is a notoriously complex process. Healthcare data is stored in a variety of formats from dozens of different providers, making it difficult for doctors and other providers to easily access all relevant data about their patients.

“This is just a natural next step,” Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said in an interview. “We are not interested in blocking information. We don’t have that reputation.”

The need for interoperability

According to the report, Oracle competitor Epic has long been accused of dragging its feet around interoperability efforts, and Oracle has not been afraid to call the company out. In a May blog postwrote Ken Glueck, executive vice president at Oracle, “Everyone in the industry understands that Epic CEO Judy Faulkner is the biggest obstacle to EHR (electronic health record) interoperability.

“Epic hopes that today’s Oracle Health announcement indicates that they are finally ready to take interoperability seriously and deliver the technology that patients and providers deserve, rather than making distracting, untrue claims,” ​​Epic said in a statement on Monday.

Several companies and organizations have previously tried to streamline the sharing of health care information, but TEFCA was designed to help bring all these actors together on a national scale. The ultimate goal of the network is to eventually standardize the legal and technical requirements for sharing patient data.

The main groups participating in health data exchanges through TEFCA are called Qualified Health Information Networks, or QHINs. These networks volunteer to participate – they are not paid – and must go through a two-step approval process to ensure they are eligible and have the necessary technical infrastructure.

Oracle said Monday it will begin the process to become a QHIN. Seven QHINs, including Epic, are now live under TEFCA.