Yet the market for health information exchange is still nascent.

Hospitals and private practices will likely focus on creating private regional HIEs (RHIOs), which connect to other organizations in their region through standards, as promoted by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) and Health Level Seven International (HL7).

HL7 and IHE are global nonprofit organizations involved in developing standards for the interoperability of health information technology. The term HL7 is also used to describe those standards based on the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. IHE promotes HL7 and standards such as Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM), which is focused on sharing digital images between providers.

Williams said the federal government recognizes there will not be a single model for deploying HIEs, although it wants a single standard for exchanging the data so that all HIEs can speak the same language. Different protocols for data exchange are making HIEs expensive to deploy, she said.

"Exchange volume is relatively low and the cost of exchanges is often higher than we would like," Williams said. "[But] we're seeing that 70% of hospitals say they plan to invest in HIE services this year."