Data Proliferation Fuels Need for Healthcare Interoperability
Healthcare interoperability is growing in importance as the amount of heath data proliferates and the free flow of data between patients, providers, and payers becomes essential for better healthcare.
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- Healthcare interoperability is growing in importance as the amount of heath data proliferates and the free flow of data between patients, providers, and payers becomes essential for better healthcare.
This was one take away for Forrester analysts who attended the recent Healthcare Information and Management System Society’s (HIMSS) conference.
At the show there was “buzz” around interoperable solutions to improve healthcare outcomes and enhance patient experience, but not much discussion of how data exchange would be enabled to achieve these results, the analysts, Annalise Clayton, Arielle Trzcinski, and Jeff Becker, commented in a recent blog post.
As in previous HIMSS conference, artificial intelligence vendors “flaunted” their capabilities with “fancy eye-catching presentation,” the analysts related. This year, AI was still “everywhere but less in your face,” the noted. Instead, AI vendors stressed “more invisible, natural experiences.” Healthcare AI use cases were demonstrated that pledged to automate tasks and help in unlocking value from data to provide insight-based care, they added.
In addition, consumerization of healthcare was all the rage at the meeting. “Instead of accepting the lack of choices healthcare has to offer, patients are making the shift to consumerism, and the industry is taking notice,” they wrote.
Healthcare organizations showed off tools and technology for making care more accessible and to give consumers the information they needed to take charge of their healthcare.
“New technologies and evolving consumer demands demonstrate the importance of understanding and accepting the shifting landscape to deliver personalized healthcare,” they concluded.
ONC Backs HL7 FHIR for APIs
To improve healthcare interoperability, ONC’s proposed rule supports the use of Health Level Seven’s (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standards for healthcare application programming interfaces (APIs).
Intermountain Healthcare Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO) Stan Huff called the ONC proposed rule a “turning point” for healthcare interoperability.
Huff told HITInfrastructure.com that interoperable healthcare APIs will have a “tremendous” impact on healthcare. “That impact is really the reason that I'm so interested in standards and in interoperability.”
The HL7 FHIR standards are already in use in many healthcare organizations for transmission of lab data, orders, and prescriptions.
Healthcare interoperability will help reduce patient deaths caused by preventable medical errors, which he estimated at 250,000 deaths per year.
“We can save the lives of patients by implementing advanced clinical decision support, for example, to detect occult sepsis or to help diagnosis and management of pulmonary embolism. But that can’t go anywhere because the infrastructure in every system is different,” he said.
“The whole healthcare enterprise nationwide and worldwide could become a learning health system because interoperability enables data to be shared seamlessly,” Huff observed.
In addition, interoperability enables exchange of data to detect outbreaks and other unforeseen public health developments, he noted.
“If we realize the vision of interoperability, it means that essentially there could be an app store for healthcare, much like there is for iPhone or Android phones. I see that as a real enabler of mobile computing for healthcare,” he added.
Plug-and-Play Interoperability
The healthcare industry needs to work toward the highest level of interoperability, plug-and-play interoperability, which “can be truly market changing,” Huff said.
Nashville-based Center for Medical Interoperability is endeavoring to promote plug-and-play interoperability. The center’s members include LifePoint Hospitals, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, Hospital Corporation of America, Cedars-Sinai Health System, Hennepin Healthcare System, Ascension Health, Community Health Systems, Scripps Health, and UNC Health Care System. They have a combined $200 billion in annual health IT buying power
The center's mission is “to achieve plug-and-play interoperability by unifying healthcare organizations to compel change, building a lab to solve shared technical challenges, and pioneering innovative research and development.”
The center warned that the “lack of plug-and-play interoperability can compromise patient safety, impact care quality and outcomes, contribute to clinician fatigue and waste billions of dollars a year.”
The center operates a testing and certification lab, in which researchers develop and demonstrate the architectures and interfaces needed to deliver healthcare interoperability and connectivity and then certify that devices and technologies meet its specifications.
