What is health information exchange? (HIE)

• A. The manual sharing of patient data between providers
• B. The electronic movement of health-related information among organizations according to nationally recognized standards
• C. A system for exchanging weather data among EMS agencies
• D. A protocol for exchanging patient consent forms

Answer: (B)

Health information exchange is the electronic movement of health-related information among organizations using nationally recognized standards to enable interoperability. It lets clinicians, hospitals, labs, and other providers access and share the right patient data at the right time to support safe, coordinated care, reduce unnecessary tests, and improve outcomes. This relies on standardized data formats and messaging (like HL7 or FHIR) and requires privacy and security protections under frameworks such as HIPAA.

The other options describe aspects that don’t capture the full concept: sharing data manually isn’t an electronic, standardized exchange; exchanging weather data is unrelated; exchanging patient consent forms alone is only a narrow part of data sharing and not the whole process of exchanging health information across systems.