MedUnite Selects BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA

MedUnite Inc. (San Diego)—an independent full-service technology firm founded by seven health insurers with the goal of standardizing healthcare transactions from paper to Internet-based—announced it will deploy Microsoft's (Redmond, WA) BizTalk Accelerator for HIPAA. The technology will be used to provide transaction standard support for MedUnite's real-time and batch, Internet and EDI-based solution that enables providers and payers to process administrative transactions electronically.

MedUnite was launched in 2000 by Aetna, Anthem, CIGNA, Health Net Inc., Oxford, PacifiCare and Wellpoint Health Networks. "It is charged by its founders with Web-enabling transactions that are currently handled either through telephony or on paper," says Sheila Schweitzer, chief operating officer, MedUnite. "They understand there are enormous savings and productivity enhancements for their internal operations by standardizing and offering content-rich transactions to their provider base. However, they also believe they will gain strength and adoption by doing it together, as opposed to doing it individually."

The firm, whose technology is based upon an XML-standard internal messaging system, chose the BizTalk product because of its fit into MedUnite's technical architecture. "MedUnite will be using BizTalk for the translation of messaging formats," explains Schweitzer. "We selected it because of ease of use. Also, it supports XML, and the HIPAA ANSI X12 N messaging formats are native to BizTalk." MedUnite also selected BizTalk because of its scalability and cost effectiveness, reports Schweitzer.