January 12, 2000
GAITHERSBURG, Maryland, USA - Fenestra Technologies Corporation
today announced its recent implementation of an e-business backbone for Washington
Publishing Company 
(WPC),
a firm that specializes in managing and distributing Electronic Data Interchange
(EDI) information.
Working with WPC and the Electronic
Healthcare Network Accreditation Committee (EHNAC),
Fenestra created the "plumbing" and back-end integration for the Standard
Transaction Format Compliance System (STFCS),
an interactive web-based system for ensuring EDI healthcare transactions comply
with the EHNAC guidelines.
STFCS was developed in response to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which requires all US healthcare entities to send electronic administrative information via EDI in a single standard. STFCS is a testing system for this standard, and the testing facility is operated by WPC. Fenestra provided the web infrastructure for STFCS, enabling healthcare organizations to securely validate their EDI transactions.
Fenestra produced STFCS as a single ISAPI (Internet Server Application Programming Interface) module that registers and authenticates users, receives and processes uploaded transactions for validation, checks compliance, and displays results. Results are stored in a Microsoft SQL Server database for on- and off-line reporting. To prevent tampering, all results are cryptographically signed using PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), the leading implementation of the RSA public-key cryptographic algorithm. To provide end-to-end security during transmission, all client/server communications are performed using the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
The heart of STFCS is accurate and efficient compliance checking. Using EDI
compliance-checking software from Telink
Systems, Inc.,
Fenestra implemented a separate embedded module that allows quick and automatic
updates to the system's EDI "vocabulary."
Steve Bass, the CEO of WPC, says, "The administrative simplification provisions of HIPAA will be realized when health care providers and payers communicate using a single electronic standard. STFCS satisfies a need identified in 1992 and again in 1993 in the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) reports and by several health care participants including Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) and the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)."
Implementing STFCS demonstrates Fenestra's versatility, and shows that its staff has the background and experience to build any e-business backbone.
About Fenestra Technologies: Fenestra researches, designs and deploys practical and turnkey solutions for highly complex content problems. Using a "triage" approach, the firm deepens feature sets and accelerates faster implementation cycles.
Core competencies include forms creation and processing, data collection and validation, complex typography formatting, and the creation of dynamic, scalable and flexible data management solutions for both electronic and paper purposes.
The U.S. Census Bureau continues to partner with Fenestra (since the early ‘90’s), and companies including IBM, ExxonMobil, and Advanced Productivity Software have also retained the firm for specialty expertise.
Contact:
Fenestra Technologies Corporation
Jane O. Smith, 301/916-8800 x 206
jane@fenestra.com