The standard observer of all things HIT might be forgiven for focusing almost exclusively on EHRs.

But it’s useful, every so often, to look at how healthcare communications is expanding in other ways, as well.

For example, iMedicor, a company that aims to offer low-cost information exchange services to physicians, recently announced that it’s going to incorporate MaxMD's National Health Information Network (NHIN) Direct Project Solution within its own HIPAA-compliant Social Health Information Exchange (SocialHIE) Platform in order to act as a secure Health Information Service (HISP) Provider.

As a result, the company says, hospitals, health information exchanges, physicians and other healthcare professionals who are members of iMedicor's SocialHIE will be able to not only send and receive secure messages within iMedicor's social networking architecture, but also to communicate in a secure environment with other physicians and professionals outside the network.

With the NHIN Direct service added to the core services of iMedicor's SocialHIE, any hospital, health information exchange or health organization can access the industry's first secure, social network coupled with a health information exchange that is low cost and quick to deploy, while addressing 100% of the ONC Meaningful Use requirements for interoperability between disparate electronic health record (EHR) systems.

According to Fred Zolla, iMedicor’s CEO, "The integration of the Direct Project software into the iMedicor SocialHIE platform will now allow for secure transmission of patient-specific data, including records, files, test results, images and other healthcare related information, both inside and outside our secure network, and give organizations with health information exchange requirements a low-cost alternative to the more expensive platforms."

As for Scott Finlay, CEO and President of MaxMD, he said, "We have great expectations that this new alliance will benefit those healthcare providers who are transitioning from a paper to an EHR system and facilitate the efficient and safe communication of patient-specific information."

According to Medicor, SocialHIE also offers additional advantages such as community development, the ability to create private healthcare information exchange networks with patient specific information, and access to a vast catalog of accredited continuing medical education (CME) programs.