Newsbytes, 1/17

• CommonWell will implement the Carequality framework to allow CommonWell subscribers to exchange information directly with Carequality participants.
• Carequality will work with CommonWell to make a version of the CommonWell record locator service available to Carequality provider organizations.
• CommonWell and the nonprofit Sequoia Project information exchange network, under which Carequality operates, will explore future collaborative endeavors.

“While future collaboration could touch on many different areas within health care IT, the immediate focus of the work between Carequality and CommonWell will be on extending providers’ ability to request and retrieve medical records electronically from other providers,” according to a press release from CommonWell.

Together, CommonWell and Carequality participants represent more than 90 percent of the acute EHR market and nearly 60 percent of the ambulatory EHR market, CommonWell reports.
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FDNA releases suite of phenotypic apps

FDNA has launched its Face2Gene suite of phenotypic apps for evaluating genetic disorders, which includes an application for pathology labs, as well as apps for clinicians, researchers, and educators.

Users of the HIPAA-compliant Face2Gene suite upload patient photos into the appropriate app, which extracts de-identified data points from the photos and compares them to a database of hundreds of thousands of similar data points from patients that have been diagnosed with rare and ultra rare genetic disorders. This information, which serves as the basis of a list of genetic syndromes, supports clinical evaluations and genetic testing analysis and interpretation.

Users of the lab application can access patients’ phenotype data securely and review plausible syndromes, prioritize variants using the human phenotype ontology terms provided by clinicians, and communicate with physicians via plug-and-play application programming interfaces.

“Face2Gene boasts world-class computer vision, deep learning, and artificial intelligence technologies that work with real-world phenotype data to add a novel dimension to variant programming and prioritization,” FDNA reported on its website.

FDNA, 617-412-7000

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Data-management system attains DoD certification

Alere Informatics has announced that its Rals data-management system for point-of-care testing has passed the Department of Defense’s Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process.

DIACAP, now the DoD Risk Management Framework, or RMF, is intended, in large part, to ensure that information systems used by DoD sites have achieved an appropriate level of risk management.

Alere Informatics, 888-971-7953

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Dr. Aller teaches informatics in the Department of Pathology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He can be reached at He can be reached at raller@usc.edu. Hal Weiner is president of Weiner Consult­ing Services, LLC, Eugene, Ore. He can be reached at hal@weinerconsulting.com.