Financial networks tapped to move health data

A commercial entity is out to prove that health care transactions can be conducted over banking networks using open-source standards and technologies.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Aug. 8, 2005.

The Medical Banking Project, a Franklin, Tenn., for-profit think tank, in July launched an initiative to demonstrate that it is feasible to exchange clinical and financial transactions in real time over what it calls a "medical banking platform."

Under the initiative, participants, including banks, hospitals, insurers and clinics in Kentucky, Tennessee and Delaware, will use open-source standards and technologies to exchange financial and clinical transactions in real time over a prototype network, said John Casillas, executive director of the Medical Banking Project. It promotes the integration of banking, credit card and health care networks to reduce health care administrative costs.

"What we're trying to do is demonstrate a network and then leave it up to commercial interests to develop it," Casillas said.

The Medical Banking Project hopes that by proving that health care transactions can be exchanged over the country's existing financial networking infrastructure, banks, health care claims clearinghouses, and companies that sell physician practice-management software and hospital information systems will move to incorporate open-source standards and technologies into their products. The think tank also hopes to make money by offering testing and certification services to those parties.