Case Study: University of Toledo achieves reliable, cost‑efficient interoperability and 350‑interface migration with NextGen Healthcare’s Mirth® Connect

Interoperability and disparate data collection drive academic medical center success

The University of Toledo Medical Center (UTMC), a 233‑bed academic medical center with 34 specialty clinics and many rotating residents, faced a growing interoperability challenge: multiple disparate EHRs and clinical systems prevented reliable, real‑time data sharing for clinical care, billing and research. UTMC needed a robust, vendor‑agnostic interface solution that could handle HL7 and non‑HL7 data, secure file transfers, and high availability without prohibitive licensing costs.

UTMC deployed Mirth Connect appliances and servers, migrating roughly 350 interfaces (completed in 2014) and using a failover “heartbeat” that syncs production to backup every three seconds. The result was smoother integration across pharmacy, lab, radiology and nursing systems, year‑long uptime on new hardware, lower total cost of ownership versus competitors, expanded data capture for a research data warehouse (including TCP/IP vitals), and a platform used for training and future projects like virtual‑reality labs.

University of Toledo

Robert Werner

Sr. Interface Developer