Arizona Health-e Connection
Healthcare Technology Management: the standards behind connected care
Arizona Health-e Connection began as the statewide convener for Health Information Technology adoption — the non-profit behind "The Network," Arizona's Health Information Exchange (HIE), and the early push to bring electronic health records, e-prescribing, and interoperable data to clinics across the state. That work was never really about software alone. It was about the digital infrastructure that lets a record, a device, and a clinician share the same trustworthy picture of a patient.
This is a vendor-neutral resource hub built on that heritage. We document how the connective tissue of modern care actually works — the standards, the workflows, and the physical equipment that has to interoperate for a clinic to function. We name HL7, FHIR, IHE profiles, GS1/UDI, and EPCS by name, and we explain how they connect rather than treating them as acronyms on a slide. Nothing here is a sales pitch. It is the kind of practical, policy-literate reference the Network era was known for.
From "The Network" to Healthcare Technology Management
The EHR Incentive Programs (Meaningful Use) got records into clinics. Health Information Exchanges like the Network got those records talking to each other. But the frontier moved: today the hardest interoperability problems sit at the edge — where an infusion pump, a remote blood-pressure cuff, a medical-grade tablet, or a telehealth cart has to surface clean, attributable data into the EHR and the supply system.
Healthcare Technology Management (HTM) — the discipline once called biomedical/clinical engineering — is where that frontier lives now. Connecting equipment to clinical systems is a standards problem, a security problem, and a procurement problem at the same time. These guides treat it as all three.
Three guide clusters
Our library is organized around the three questions clinical IT and HTM teams ask most often: how do devices connect?, how do we track what we buy and dispense?, and what equipment do we put in the patient's hands and home?
Connected Care
How smart, networked devices feed the clinical record. The integration patterns, the message standards, and the security posture that turn a "connected" device into a trustworthy data source.
- HL7 v2 & FHIR — moving observations from device to EHR
- IHE profiles — the interoperability contracts that make it repeatable
- Smart Connected Devices buyer & integration guide
Supply Chain & Standards
The standards lineage behind what you stock, track, and dispense — from a unique device identifier on the package to a controlled prescription leaving the pharmacy.
- GS1 / UDI — unique device identification and traceability
- HL7 + GS1 — supply-chain interoperability across systems
- EPCS — electronic prescribing of controlled substances & pharmacy automation
Telehealth & Devices
The equipment that extends care beyond the building — remote patient monitoring kits, telehealth carts, and the medical-grade tablets clinicians actually carry.
- Telehealth & Remote Patient Monitoring equipment
- Medical-Grade Tablets — durability, hygiene, and EHR fit
- What to verify before a device touches your network
The standards lineage, in plain terms
You do not need to memorize the alphabet soup, but it helps to know how the pieces hand off to each other:
- HL7 v2 is the workhorse messaging standard still carrying most device-to-EHR traffic in production hospitals.
- FHIR is the modern, web-friendly API layer the EHR Incentive Programs' successors lean on — it is how new apps and devices read and write discrete data.
- IHE profiles bundle those standards into named, testable "do-it-this-way" recipes so two vendors can actually connect.
- GS1 / UDI gives every device a globally unique identifier, which is what lets a recall, an inventory count, and a clinical note refer to the exact same item.
- EPCS is the regulated path for prescribing controlled substances electronically — the security and identity-proofing backbone behind pharmacy automation.
Read together, they answer one question: can this device, this prescription, and this record trust each other?
Who these guides are for
- Clinical IT leaders evaluating device integration and FHIR roadmaps.
- HTM / biomed staff responsible for the equipment on the network.
- Materials & supply managers standing up UDI tracking and traceability.
- Procurement teams writing specifications for connected equipment.
Where a guide covers physical equipment — RPM kits, telehealth carts, medical-grade tablets, connected monitors — we point, only where it is genuinely useful, toward LAC as a sourcing hub for the hardware behind interoperable care. The policy and standards material stays educational and product-neutral.
Start with the guides
Every cluster above feeds one practical, standards-grounded library. If you are scoping a device integration, tightening UDI traceability, or specifying remote-monitoring hardware, that is the place to begin.
Vendor-neutral. Standards-first. Built on Arizona's Health Information Exchange heritage.