Cyberinfrastructure for Secondary Use of EHR Data: SSA's Use of the Nationwide Health Information Network

This study examined the use of the Nationwide Health Information Network as a cyberinfrastructure for secure and interoperable transport of existing clinical data from electronic health records. The context for this study was secondary use of existing data for Social Security Administration (SSA) disability determination. The medical records were requested and gathered using an SSA developed application called MEGAHIT. While challenges were expressed in terms of some technical standards such as gateway specifications, successes were articulated in terms of turnaround time for the release of information of under 2 minutes, a 30% time saving in overall medical information development.