MEDecision and Health Language Inc. Form Strategic Alliance

WAYNE, PA, March 16, 2011 (Press-News.org) MEDecision, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative health management solutions, and Health Language, Inc. (HLI), a global leader in medical terminology management, today announced that the companies have entered into a strategic partnership that will enable MEDecision to help its healthcare payer and provider customers transition to, comply with and capitalize on the industry's forthcoming ICD-10 requirements.

Under the agreement, MEDecision will incorporate HLI's Language Engine (LE) into its collaborative health management portfolio to accelerate the transition to the ICD-10 coding system, which goes into effect on October 1, 2013. This will give payers and providers an increased level of coding specificity and enable them to boost the efficiency of care management processes and promote interoperability. The web service platform synergies between the companies' technologies will allow for faster and easier integration with customers' systems, regardless of their technology platform(s).

"Adding LE to our technologies enables us to offer an additional health management benefit, not just an ICD-10 compliance component," said Eric Demers, executive vice president and chief strategy officer at MEDecision. "With this capability, we can help healthcare stakeholders keep pace with the ongoing introduction of new and updated standards and augment their administrative and care management processes for greater effectiveness. We're very pleased with the alliance we've forged with HLI and are excited about the advanced resources it will allow us to offer our customers."

The arrangement with HLI demonstrates MEDecision's continued commitment to collaboration, data integration and health information exchange. LE's ability to collect data from disparate codes and vocabularies, convert it into standard terminologies and codes, and deliver it to a variety of platforms enhances the interoperability approach inherent in the design of MEDecision's solutions. Additionally, LE's mapping capability and web service integration will hasten the crosswalk from ICD-9 to ICD-10 and streamline integration through existing translations, HLI's provider friendly terminology and customized mapping when necessary.

"MEDecision clearly shares our philosophy that technology is our best means of bringing sustainable, positive change to the healthcare system," said George Schwend, CEO at Health Language. "Combining our capabilities with their solutions gives users powerful tools for navigating changing regulations and evolving market forces to establish systems and processes that foster growth and a competitive advantage."

For more information about MEDecision, please visit http://www.MEDecision.com. Follow the company on Twitter at @MEDecision and on Facebook at http://www.MEDecision.com/Facebook. For more information about Health Language, visit http://www.HealthLanguage.com and follow the company on Twitter at @health_language.

About Health Language

Denver-based Health Language, Inc. (HLI) develops and delivers state-of-the- art software solutions that automatically incorporate medical vocabulary and coding standards into healthcare information technology (HCIT) applications. HLI's Language Engine (LE) allows centralized access to medical terminology standards and generates mappings to create a common pool of standardized codes and concepts that enhance patient safety, facilitate clinical outcomes analysis and accelerate reimbursement. It also provides standards for modeling, storing, updating and distributing information consistently for interoperability between hospitals, regions and countries. For more information, visit http://www.healthlanguage.com or call 720-940-2900.

About MEDecision

MEDecision offers collaborative health management solutions that provide a way for payers and providers to harness the power of knowledge to enable the best clinical decisions, engage patients and improve health outcomes. Designed around a patient-aware health management philosophy, MEDecision's solutions include Alineo , a health management platform for delivering outcome-driven case, disease, utilization and behavioral health management; InFrame , a set of tools to facilitate the health and performance management processes for physicians and accountable care organizations; and Nexalign , MEDecision's health decision support service that applies analytics to information gathered from multiple sources to foster better business and clinical decisions on a patient's behalf. For more information, visit http://www.MEDecision.com.