The GRHID Platform is your network's very own search engine - like a Yahoo! or Google that has been designed specifically for healthcare information. The GRHID Platform and web search engines both help users find the information they are looking for by indexing and organizing vast amounts of data. In our case, the data is stored on GRHID Servers - any server with a Java-supported operating system running the GRHID Platform software. When documents or data sets are requested from a GRHID Server, the search is distributed to all of the GRHID Servers in your network. The results are returned to the originating server, aggregated, and returned to the requesting user or system.

However, there are some key differences between GRHID search technology and web search technology:

• Healthcare providers host their own GRHID Servers. This means data stays where it is captured. Health networks can use as many GRHID Servers as determined by the political, legal, and market realities of their network. Competing organizations can share data without giving up control of their patient lists. Whether a network uses one or one hundred GRHID Servers, the search results are the same.
  
  
• Healthcare providers select the information that is made available to the network. There is no crawler or other invasive technique used to extract data from your day-to-day systems. For more information on how data is made available to the network, see Sharing Data.
  
  
• Only authorized users or entities can view the information. Adding information to a GRHID Server does not make it available to everyone in the network. Information can only be shared or disclosed (as defined by the HIPAA privacy rule) with the patient's authorization. This ensures the protection of the patient as well as the healthcare provider.
  
  
• Search results are human or machine readable. This means you can view the results with a web browser, or import them into your EHR system and view them with the user interface you use on a daily basis. For example:
  
  Machine Readable CCR Data Set
  Human Readable CCR Data Set
  
  
• More accurate search results. With the GRHID Platform, you have the option of reviewing a set of documents for a patient in order to find the information you are looking for, but you can also search the content of the documents when you submit a query so you get exactly the documents you want. When retrieving data sets, you can specify the exact information you want returned and receive the data set in a single XML document. For more information, see Finding Information.