If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve visited a healthcare facility at some point in your life. As part of the visit, you probably filled out a substantial number of documents regarding your allergies, medical history, and current medications – a standard procedure most people don’t think twice about.
But what if your entire medical history was readily available at any facility, anywhere in the country – and all you had to do was provide an ID, fingerprint, chip, or retinal scan to the receptionist. Never again would you need to struggle to recall a medication dose or surgery date – all of the information would be right there, ready to access.
That’s just one of the potential benefits that comes with interoperability in healthcare.
What is Healthcare Interoperability?
Hold on for a second – what exactly is Healthcare interoperability?
Interoperability represents an aspect of the healthcare industry’s information technology sector responsible for underlying all initiatives for coordinated healthcare throughout communities for clinical archiving.
In simple terms – it means various healthcare systems can communicate seamlessly with each other – making medical data universally available.
HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) defines interoperability as:
The extent to which systems and devices can exchange data, and interpret that shared data. For two systems to be interoperable, they must be able to exchange data and subsequently present that data such that it can be understood by a user.
Carequality – an Interoperability collaborative, compares the situation to a cellphone plan for a simpler insight:
“What if you had a cell phone plan that only allowed you to call other customers of your carrier? That’s the situation for most healthcare providers today, when they join a data sharing network.”
For most people, that very situation seems absurd – as we need to be able to contact anyone, at any time for ultimate convenience. This is the goal of interoperability: allowing healthcare providers to share information across the same platform, and provide better care for patients.
Why Is Interoperability Important?
So why is interoperability so important to the current healthcare system? In February 2014, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Hosted Health Care innovation day, and interoperability was declared a central focus.
During the meeting, West Health introduced the report “Igniting an Interoperable Healthcare system” designed to outline the various benefits of interoperability, and how it could be incorporated into healthcare systems throughout the world. The main point of the presentation was that interoperability is crucial to reform the dysfunctional, and often chaotic nature behind how information was previously shared among hospitals.
On top of that, the report went on to point out that unlike email and financial accounts, accessing your medical record isn’t something that anyone can do from anywhere in the world. It’s time for the healthcare environment to become more tech friendly, and embrace options for making sharing information among approved parties easier.
Accessing Healthcare Interoperability
Of course, as fantastic as Healthcare Interoperability might sound – it’s not quite as simple as just embracing new technology – the road forward is actually full of obstacles. First of all, the short-term cost associated with achieving total interoperability in healthcare is substantial. Though having universal access to medical data could reduce costs and improve patient care in the long run, many providers have already invested a lot of money in data systems that aren’t easily made interoperable due to varying formats and technical procedures.
On top of that, health data management has often been a competitive arena between healthcare providers. According to AHIMA (the American Health Information Management Association) most providers are focusing on their own internal systems to gain a competitive advantage; as such, most progress in the field of data management has taken place within single organizations instead of between them.
And, to top it all off…
Laws and standards of data management vary greatly from state to state and practice to practice. What we’re left with is a “pie in the sky” type of idea.
That Doesn’t Mean Interoperability is Impossible, Though
Currently there are several initiatives pushing for total interoperability in healthcare, and many in the industry, including major EHR players such as Epic and Cerner, are starting to see the long term gain would be well worth the short term investment.
One of the most well-known alliances pushing for interoperability is The Sequoia Project. They are behind Carequality, a public-private, multi-stakeholder collaborative, as well as the eHealth Exchange, a collaborative effort attempting to use a defined set of rules to improve the reporting of public health data.
Another major initiative is the Commonwell Health Alliance. They are focused on working toward an interoperable platform that adheres to the highest levels of privacy and data security; believing that, in order to achieve the best results, interoperability must be built into the healthcare IT systems instead of using interfaces “bolted on as an afterthought.”
With all of these collaborations, could we see interoperability become a reality in the near future? Will we see the Sequoia project and Commonwell join forces?
Only time will tell.
Have an opinion? Let us know in the comments below.
