CARIN Alliance

Ownership

Public/Private Partnership

Governance

Governed by leadership and Board.

Geographic Reach (within US)

Nationwide

Mission

CARIN’s vision is to rapidly advance the ability for consumers and their authorized caregivers to easily get, use, and share their digital health information when, where, and how they want to achieve their goals. Specifically, they are promoting the ability for consumers and their authorized caregivers to gain digital access to their health information via non-proprietary application programming interfaces or APIs. 

How does this approach facilitate exchange?

The CARIN Alliance allows for the consumer or their authorized caregiver to electronically request access to their health information from a third party application of their choice to any provider or hospital of their choice, and for a covered entity to electronically send that data to the consumer.

 

The CARIN Trust Framework and Code of Conduct outlines a foundational set of principles for how healthcare organizations can share data with consumers. 

Access Method (Use Cases)

Consumer-controlled third-party applications or third-party data stores

Primary Goals/Objectives

In 2017, CARIN focused on overcoming barriers to consumer-directed exchange in four areas: 

1) Develop a trust framework for consumer-directed exchange.

2) Develop ways to help providers and others share best practices on implementation of the FHIR®-based APIs and use to advance consumer-directed health information exchange.

3) Develop ways to assist organizations implementing consumer-directed exchange with the goal of improving quality, outcomes, affordability, and patient satisfaction. This includes working with AHIMA to develop and enhance a form for patients to access their electronic health information.

4) Develop policy recommendations to help inform HHS, ONC, OCR, FTC, and other regulators about ways to support the private sector in implementing the above strategies.

Type

Consumer Directed Network

Number of Live Connections and/or Participants

49 published FHIR endpoints (as of October 2018)

Members

Providers, Payers, Vendors, Patient Groups, Hospital Systems, Health IT companies, EHR vendors, Purchasers, etc.

Primary Participants

Healthcare organizations, EHR companies,  Application Developers, Consumers and Caregivers

Costs (Amount and/or Party Incurring Cost)

The CARIN Alliance is a coalition of the willing based on meaningful contributions from each participating organization.

Directory/MPI Details

The CARIN Alliance is working with standards development organizations (SDOs) to develop a process for remotely ID proofing, authenticating, and patient matching individuals across systems using the latest open technology standards where the consumer is at the center of the data exchange. 

Standards Leveraged

Multiple: Argonaut DSTU2, Open ID Connect / Oauth 2.0, SMART on FHIR®, and others.

Onboarding Process (Requirements to connect)

This process is currently in development.

Data Persistance

Federated Model: The CARIN trust framework supports exchange between covered entities and non-covered entities including applications and consumers. The CARIN Alliance is not a data network rather it’s a set of agreed upon principles for exchanging data with consumers and applications. The alliance is both technology and vendor agnostic.

Certification Requirements for Participation

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Testing

N/A

Future Plans

CARIN as an alliance will only continue to exist if there is continued interest from its board members and there are ongoing needs in the market. 

Develop frameworks and best practices to eliminate the friction associated with a consumer requesting access to their electronic health information and that information being sent from one or more than one provider to the third-party data store (i.e., application) the consumer has chosen.  

Current Collaboration across Efforts

Surescripts and a number of Community HIEs serve as an Alliance Members of CARIN (source)