One of the big updates from DirectTrust at The Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference, a Collaboration with the DirectTrust Summit, was how DirectTrust was approaching changes and updates to their directory of direct addresses. Many in the community understand the important and value of the directory which contains over 1 million addresses in it. However, a directory that’s updated and managed by multiple participants has many unique challenges. The DirectTrust directory improvement initiative is working to address some of these challenges.
Time to learn about the @DirectTrustorg Directory improvement initiative.
A directory of direct addresses is so powerful. #Together4Health2022 #hitsm pic.twitter.com/faBsgOABnz
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
This was a popular session and it was clear that many were interested in how the directory was going to be improved.
Manually updating bad direct addresses is not going to scale. #Together4Health2022 @DirectTrustorg
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
This was clear. An email to a person to update a specific address is not a solution. The improvement initiative had to take a much more comprehensive approach.
A few of the challenges of the current directory approach included:
Knowing the direct address for an organization or which direct address is best for an organization is a challenge. #Together4Health2022 @DirectTrustorg
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
Cleaning up the directory takes multiple efforts. @DirectTrustorg has added multiple fields, but the HISPS have to utilize the fields and populate the right data. #Together4Health2022
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
This last one is a really big one that takes the community getting involved. Not always an easy task.
Thus, the directory improvement process that DirectTrust employed:
Overview of the Directory Improvement Initiative #Together4Health2022 @DirectTrustorg pic.twitter.com/1cwGSVfqcN
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
Great move for HISPS to use FHIR to update the directory versus batch file updates. #Together4Health2022 @DirectTrustorg https://t.co/CHXlDy0qtg
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
My favorite piece of this is the move to FHIR updates versus the current batch file updates. Definitely a superior solution, but also is going to take some development work by vendors to switch to this new approach. We’ll see if they do it or not since at least for now DirectTrust will be supporting both options. The reason why the move to FHIR updates of the directory were clear:
Updating and adding directory entries in real time is the future. @DirectTrustorg #Together4Health2022
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
Here’s a look at some of the other efforts to improve the directory:
Efforts to improve the @DirectTrustorg directory that move the meter. #Together4Health2022 pic.twitter.com/sSICPMUDRp
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
I like the new reporting that’s available to help an organization know how their doing when it comes to updating the directory properly. That’s a good first step to understanding the scope of the problem.
There’s a “purpose” field in the @DirectTrustorg directory which can be used to specify a preferred address or other purposes for the address. They currently have about 20 purposes/codes for that field. #Together4Health2022
— John Lynn (@techguy) August 22, 2022
I was also intrigued by the “purpose” field that’s available today to help solve the problem of knowing which direct address is for which type of communication.
When you start diving into the details of maintaining a directory of direct messages like this, you can see that it’s a quite complicated problem. It’s great to see DirectTrust working hard to fix many of those problems so that people can use the directory and trust the quality of the data in it. We’d all love to be able to find a working direct address in the directory.
