About GPII
The Voluntary Universal Healthcare Identifier (VUHID) project sponsored by Global Patient Identifiers, Inc. (GPII) can play a major role in overcoming these perceived barriers with a simple, inexpensive and secure approach. GPII is proposing VUHID as a grass-roots approach that avoids government intervention and overhead. With the proliferation of regional health information organizations (RHIOs) and health information exchanges (HIEs), VUHID can be implemented incrementally and expand as these organizations begin to share information across communities, states and eventually the entire US.
GPII was established in 2008 to support and deploy the VUHID system which grew of a standards effort established by ASTM International committee E31. Barry Hieb, MD ., GPII's Chief Technology Officer, has worked on this initiative from its inception and designed GPII as a non-profit organization as a demonstration of his belief that a voluntary, universal patient identifier is essential to achieve high quality, low cost healthcare in the United States.
ASTM International is an international standards organization with over 100 years of history developing standards. E31 is the healthcare standards development committee of ASTM. The basic standard defining the properties of the VUHID healthcare identifier has been in place since 1995 in the form of standard E 1714. That standard has been upgraded twice, most recently in 2007. Also in 2007, a companion standard E 2553 was developed that describes the implementation strategy on which VUHID is based. GPII represents a private implementation effort launched early in 2007. Key drivers of GPII's implementation strategy are:
- There will be no central data base or repository of patient information on which VUHID is dependent.
- VUHID will work with EMPI vendors whose systems will assign VUHID identifiers and "triage" requests for demographic and clinical information from all participating provider organizations and their information systems.
- Consumers can obtain a VUHID identifier through their RHIO/HIE. Because the costs to deploy and support VUHID are so low and the benefits so easily quantifiable, GPII expects that participating RHIOs/HIEs will achieve full return on their investment in the first 12-24 months of VUHID deployment.
So, what is VUHID?
- A web-based solution that interacts with Enterprise Master Person Index systems (EMPIs), already central to the operations of HIEs and RHIOs, to assign and manage a globally-unique patient identifier for any member who wishes to participate.
- VUHID private identifiers allow patients to indicate that certain aspects of their medical records are "private", so that patients can allow or deny access to providers consistent with the organizational policies of HIEs.
- The VUHID solution is cost effective and can virtually eliminate the 8% incidence of patient identification errors that is the current industry experience when patient identification is performed using demographic matching techniques.
- The VUHID system represents a robust and flexible infrastructure that can be used to improve many aspects of healthcare including clinical care, payment for care, research, information privacy, public health and education.
- The VUHID server does not contain any patient information (identification, demographic or clinical) but can point to EMPIs which manage patient identity processing and links to clinical systems.
- VUHID takes government out of the equation, avoiding the creation of a monolithic system and data base of personal information and thus avoiding the costs and privacy risks associated with such a system.
There is no "silver bullet" that will address all of the challenges confronting the US healthcare system. The solutions to these complex issues will come from many stakeholders in both the private and public sectors, representing healthcare providers, consumers, technology suppliers, regulators and payers. GPII's VUHID system offers an essential infrastructure and a unique approach as part of the overall healthcare solution and is focused on the goals of unambiguous patient identification and enhanced patient control of the privacy of their information.