MBPROJECT SELECTS ECLIPSE FOR C.O.M.B.A.T. INITIATIVE

Contact: Evelyn Marquez Sanchez
615-794-2009
info@mbproject.org

Franklin, TN (February 21, 2006) The Medical Banking Project joined the Eclipse Foundation as an Associate Member to build out its C.O.M.B.A.T. reference architecture using the Eclipse Open Healthcare Framework (OHF). The OHF is the reference implementation platform for the Healthcare Services Specifications Project, supported by Health Level Seven (HL7) and the Object Management Group (OMG). MBProject will architect and build out medical banking functions using the platform.

“Eclipse offers a world class platform with a solid user base,” said John Casillas, founder of MBProject. “MBProject is focused on combating rising costs in healthcare by enabling banks to link consumers, providers, health plans, RHIOs, employers and others.  The Eclipse OHF will reduce the time necessary to build a reference implementation for this purpose." The effort includes new 'mbXML' profiles that banks could use to do things like present personal healthcare records via online portals or support real time settlement of claims.

"Eclipse is an excellent open source environment," said John Hardin, CIO of Kentucky-based MAPHIN.net and Chair of the Planning and Design Subcommittee for MBProject. "We are monitoring all of the standards harmonization mechanisms in the marketplace while linking our project to a state-of-the-art platform."

"We are looking forward to working with the Medical Banking Project.  They have extensive knowledge and experience in healthcare, financial organizations and large employers," said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation.  He was referring to organizations like Disney, ABAN AMRO, PNC Bank, Mellon, Wachovia, US Bank, Fiserv, United Healthcare and many others who have joined MBProject.

"Eclipse OHF is active in HSSP and will ensure that the standards we produce are not shelfware," said Ken Rubin, one of the co-chairs of the HSSP effort. "Commitments to these open solutions, such as the Medical Banking Project is making, are essential if the healthcare industry is going to realize the vision of reliable, secure, open interoperability. We are excited to have them aboard."

To centralize development activity MBProject selected Edifecs, Inc., a leading provider of transaction interoperability solutions. "Edifecs will help us to test and certify our transactions for HIPAA compliance and work through versioning of the system," said Hardin, a former GM executive. "We're very excited to be a member of MBProject and participate in the deployment of the community portal," said Herb Larsen, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Seattle, WA-based Edifecs. "Our solutions support leading firms around the world and we look forward to furthering our support for medical banking stakeholders, as well."

The C.O.M.B.A.T. Initiative (stands for "Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture and Technology") was announced in July 2005 and since has attracted a global following.  Further updates will be made at MBProject's 4th National Medical Banking Institute in Nashville, TN, starting on February 22, where leaders will convene to discuss how medical banking models can transform claims processing, adoption of personal healthcare records, coordination of community healthcare and other areas. Proceedings will be captured in a "Medical Banking Road Map for America, Version 2" and delivered to government agencies.

About the Medical Banking Project...The Medical Banking Project (a.k.a. “MBProject”) is an independent policy research and strategic advisory firm that facilitates the latent integration of banking technology, infrastructure and credit resources with healthcare administrative operations. The firm coined the term “medical banking™” in 1995 to denote this emerging niche’ industry. It provides educational and workgroup forums and is spearheading two related initiatives: a global, open source software platform (“C.O.M.B.A.T. – Cooperative Open-source Medical Banking Architecture & Technology™”) to combat rising healthcare costs using medical banking principles and technology and a fee-based, bank-driven community system ("Charitable Communities Network™") that coordinates safety net healthcare access for uninsurable, uninsured and under-insured individuals. The initiatives demonstrate how banks can leverage HIPAA's privacy, security and electronic mandates to deliver substantive cost benefits to care givers, employers and consumers. For more information, please go to http://www.mbproject.org.

About Eclipse...Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on providing an extensible development platform and application frameworks for building software. Eclipse provides extensible tools and frameworks that span the software development lifecycle, including support for modeling, language development environments for Java, C/C++ and others, testing and performance, business intelligence, rich client applications and embedded development. A large, vibrant ecosystem of major technology vendors, innovative start-ups, universities and research institutions and individuals extend, complement and support the Eclipse Platform. The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the Eclipse projects. Full details of Eclipse and the Eclipse Foundation are available at www.eclipse.org.

About HSSP...The Healthcare Services Specification Project (HSSP) is a collaborative effort between the HL7 Service Oriented Architecture SIG and the Object Management Group Healthcare Domain Task Force to identify and document service specifications, functionality, and conformance supportive and relevant to healthcare IT stakeholders and resulting in real-world implementations. Recognizing the need for specifications for services to support healthcare IT as part of national infrastructures, Health Level Seven and the Object Management Group have forged this agreement to collaborate to the advantage of the health domain sector. Details about HSSP can be found at http://hssp.wikispaces.com. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the HL7 or OMG organizations.

About Edifecs...Edifecs, Inc. helps organizations achieve interoperability and dramatic return on investment by enabling, managing and deriving business value from standard electronic transactions within trading partner communities. 2006 marks 10 years of Edifecs’ leadership and expertise in providing innovative technology solutions to over 1600 customers worldwide. Edifecs has over 300 customers and partners in healthcare that include 16 Blue Plans, 35 Medicaid, State and Federal Agencies, along with partnership arrangements with all leading middleware stack vendors. Founded in 1996, Edifecs is headquartered in Bellevue, WA. Company website: www.edifecs.com. Contact: Kevin Pierce 425-452-0622, kevinp@edifecs.com.

About MAPHIN.net...MedAccessPlus Health Informatics Network is a network of electronic health record stores. We integrate with, and index references to, the myriad of locations where information about a person's healthcare history are stored. Started in 2005, our foundation is built on e-business principles that have been proven over the past 10 years, and the newly minted Healthcare e-business processes and tools emerging from standards groups such as HIMSS and HL7. In addition to integrating healthcare information, we bring in data from financial and insurance institutions to shed additional light on the individuals' healthcare picture. We partner with the leading companies in each field to bring data into the MAPHIN network. For more information, please go to:  www.maphin.net.

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© Copyright 2006 The Medical Banking Project, 320 Main Street, Suite 230, Franklin, TN 37064. Medical banking™ is a trademark of the Medical Banking Project, (a.k.a. MBProject). All rights reserved.