IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Mirth Corporation, the leader in commercial open source healthcare information technology, today announced the launch of Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange (Mirth MUx) as well as the first Mirth MUx implementation at Thayer County Health Services (TCHS).

TCHS is a critical access hospital serving rural communities in Nebraska. It is one of only 16 hospitals selected nationally to date to receive federal grant funding for EMR implementation. Implementation of Mirth MUx represents a key element in its plan for becoming one of the first health systems to achieve stage 7 in the EMR adoption maturity model.

Designed for hospitals, healthcare providers and health information exchanges, Mirth MUx can expedite the achievement of proposed meaningful use criteria for clinical information exchange necessary to achieve government incentive payments for Electronic Health Record implementation starting in 2011.

Mirth MUx enables healthcare organizations to securely exchange clinical information such as patient clinical summaries, lab results, medication histories and other records - locally or nationally - either directly or via the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN). It incorporates the ONC backed open source NHIN CONNECT solution, with commercial support from Mirth Corporation, bundled with a full suite of Mirth's own interoperability tools. Designed to support standards such as HL7 and the Continuity of Care Document (CCD), Mirth MUx enables organizations to go live in as little as two weeks and at a far lower cost than traditional vendor solutions. Authorized healthcare providers can access critical patient information where and when it's needed via the Mirth MUx document portal, accessed securely via any Internet-connected computer.

TCHS, despite its small size and rural location, is a national leader in health information technology deployment and the first hospital of its kind to achieve NHIN connectivity.

"By deploying Mirth MUx now we get an important jump start toward meeting meaningful use criteria for care collaboration, and more importantly we position ourselves to better serve the patients and healthcare providers in our community," said Joyce Beck, CEO of Thayer County Health System. "A healthcare system in which clinical information is both secured and available to care providers across the community is safer and less costly for everyone. Doctors in emergency settings can access critical patient information to inform treatment decisions, and we can reduce the cost and waste represented by duplicate tests and diagnostic services that get ordered when information is siloed. We're excited about the potential for Mirth MUx to get us there faster and at an affordable cost to our health system," added Beck.

Since its launch as the Mirth Project in 2006, Mirth Connect - a core component of Mirth MUx - has become the most widely downloaded open source software for healthcare data integration, with over 70,000 worldwide downloads and a user community numbering over 7,000 professionals. Mirth Connect supports all major healthcare data interchange standards, including HL7, CCD, X12, DICOM, NCPDP, and XML.

In addition to Mirth Connect, the Mirth MUx solution includes Mirth hosted appliances pre-loaded with software and interfaces, implementation services, commercial support, 24/7 emergency response, and DURSA consulting for getting the needed data use agreement in place to support exchange of Protected Health Information.

"We created Mirth Meaningful Use Exchange because customers are asking for it. They recognize the need to get infrastructure in place today for exchange of clinical information, and yet they are faced with tight budgets and overstretched IT staff. Mirth MUx solves this dilemma by getting them up and running fast with a cost-effective solution that enables them to exchange patient clinical summaries, lab results and more," said Jon Teichrow, president of Mirth Corporation. "At Mirth Corporation we believe connecting clinicians with critical patient information stored across disparate systems will create a safer, more coordinated, and less costly healthcare system. Mirth MUx makes that possible - even for the smallest, most budget-constrained healthcare organizations," added Teichrow. Visit http://www.mirthcorp.com/MUx for more information.

About Mirth Corporation

Mirth is a global leader in commercial open source products and services powering healthcare interoperability. It also delivers information technology consulting and hosts high availability secure applications. Mirth solutions are used daily by thousands of health professionals and institutions worldwide to streamline care management processes and to securely exchange health information. The Mirth Project represents the first in a series of Mirth initiatives aimed at transforming health information technology by making high-value information technology utilities available to the healthcare community on an open source basis. For more information visit www.MirthCorp.com.

SOURCE Mirth Corporation