Health Information Exchange (HIE) Systems

The Province operates a number of health information exchange services, which allow point-of-service applications to exchange patient information with the clinical information repositories and registries.

The ministry publishes conformance standards for software organizations seeking access to the ministry's HIE systems.

These standards include:

• business rules
• application enforced rules
• privacy and security rules
• training development and delivery rules
• detailed technical specifications for the transport mechanism and electronic message services used in transmitting the information

The ministry's available HIE services include the:

• Client Registry
• Provider and Location Registry
• PharmaNet
• Provincial Laboratory Information Solution

Client Registry

The Client Registry is BC’s official registry of healthcare client demographic information.

This includes:

• personal health number (PHN)
• health authority source system identifiers (e.g., medical record number)
• name
• date of birth
• date of death (if applicable)
• gender
• address
• telephone number

Authorized users with an integrated point-of-service (POS) application can:

• search for patient identity and demographic information
• store patient identity and demographic information in the local application
• update patient demographic information in the Client Registry
• create PHNs for patients

Provider and Location Registry (PLR)

The PLR is BC’s authoritative registry of healthcare providers' demographic and professional information (e.g., name, identifiers, demographics, expertise, contact and licensing status).

Authorized users with an integrated POS application can:

• maintain internal provider directories within the health sector
• support activities between care providers (e.g., patient referrals, informal consultations)
• search for provider demographic and professional information
• store provider demographic and professional information in the local application
• receive real-time distributions of updated provider information to store in local directories
• update provider work location information in the PLR

PharmaNet

PharmaNet is the provincial drug information and claims processing system that links all BC pharmacies to a central data system.

Every prescription dispensed in community pharmacies in BC is entered into PharmaNet.

PharmaNet helps pharmacists and other healthcare providers identify and warn patients about potentially harmful medication interactions, unintended duplications, and risks from the misuse of prescription drugs.

Authorized users with an integrated POS application can:

• submit prescription dispense and claim information
• retrieve patient medication histories
• update patient medication histories with over-the-counter medications, dispensed samples, clinical conditions and adverse drug reactions
• generate drug monographs for professional information and patient counselling
• perform drug use evaluations to identify possible drug interactions
• monitor patient medication adherence by verifying the status of a prescription

Provincial Laboratory Information Solution (PLIS)

The PLIS contains diagnostic laboratory test results from private and public laboratories across BC.

Authorized users with an integrated POS application can:

• retrieve patient lab test results (including tests ordered by other healthcare providers) and summaries of all lab results for a specified period
• store lab results data in the local application for clinical decision support purposes (e.g., trending)
• prevent the duplication of lab tests

* Note: At this time there are no new integrations permitted to use the HIAL transport mechanism. Since the HIAL is the only transport mechanism used to integrate with PLIS, new integrations with PLIS are not permitted until a new transport mechanism is determined. There are no known timelines for a new transport mechanism for PLIS; it could potentially be a year or more. In the meantime, existing applications with access to PLIS are permitted to continue.