Health Gorilla, a company seeking to become a Qualified Health Information Network (QHIN) under the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement, has bolstered its leadership team by hiring Dave Cassel, former executive director of Carequality, as well as Steven Lane, MD, MPH, former director of clinical informatics at Sutter Health, based in California.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has announced plans to apply for QHIN status in 2021. It says its “flexible interoperability platform was designed to meet the goals of the Trusted Exchange Framework and Agreement (TEFCA) of the 21st Century Cures Act and provides connections between health care providers, health plans, public health agencies and individuals. In June 2020, Health Gorilla implemented what it calls the first “TEFCA-inspired HIE” in Puerto Rico. Today, Health Gorilla acts as the sole health information exchange provider for the Puerto Rico Department of Health and operates as the HIE connecting payers, labs, providers, patients, and managers. of public health.
The company also said it will begin integrating social determinants of health (SDOH) data into its health interoperability platform through a collaboration with LexisNexis Risk Solutions.
In March 2022, the company announced that it had raised $50 million in Series C funding to accelerate product development, market expansion, and enterprise-wide talent acquisition efforts. .
Cassel brings more than 20 years of health technology experience and has established a reputation as a leader in national health information exchange. Most recently, Cassel was President and COO of Safe Health Systems, a connected diagnostics platform operating in partnership with the Mayo Clinic. Prior to Safe, Cassel served as executive director of the Carequality interoperability initiative for six years. Prior to Carequality, he spent 17 years at Epic Systems, where he led the implementation and support of the Care Everywhere health information exchange application.
In his new role as Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Operations, Cassel will lead Health Gorilla’s implementation, operations, and customer success teams, and will also be responsible for Health Gorilla’s strategy in his quest for a QHIN designation. The application period officially opens on October 3.
“When I left Carequality a year ago, I knew there was a tremendous amount of work to be done to create true national interoperability,” Cassel said in a statement. “Over the past few years, Health Gorilla has become a market leader in patient data recovery, and I’m excited to see what we’re able to accomplish together.
Lane recently joined the company as Chief Medical Officer. The company said it will lead government collaborations, innovative partnerships, and accelerate its strategy to support nationwide adoption of TEFCA.
Lane is Chair of the Carequality Steering Committee and a member of the Board of Directors of The Sequoia Project, TEFCA’s Recognized Coordinating Entity designated by the Office of the National Health Information Technology Coordinator (ONC). He is also a member of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC) for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Health Information Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Interoperability & HIE Committee and the Da Vinci Project Clinical Advisory Council.
He has worked in clinical informatics for over 30 years, most recently as director of clinical informatics for privacy, information security and interoperability at Sutter Health, and cared for patients as a primary care family physician for over 35 years.
“The future of the healthcare industry depends on broader access to standardized and actionable data,” Lane said in a statement. “I am very happy to see TEFCA implemented and to join Health Gorilla in its journey to become one of the first Information Networks. They are well placed to integrate a wide range of health actors into the national framework. Next Generation Health Data Exchange.
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