F rom elevating patient experience, lowering healthcare costs, to maximizing outcomes, interoperability in healthcare offers a plethora of benefits. Healthcare organizations across the globe are realizing its value and leveraging the capabilities of next-gen technologies to create interoperability solutions. Markets and Markets research report reveals that the global healthcare interoperability market is prognosticated to reach $4.2 billion in 2024. Despite the invaluable benefits that it offers, interoperability is not necessarily easy to implement.

Healthcare organizations are faced with complexities including voluminous incoming data, the diversity of EHR systems, a mix of cloud APIs and interfaces that pose as major challenges to achieving healthcare interoperability.

5A New take on Healthcare Interoperability

Interoperability in healthcare is one of the critical concepts that have a growing focus in the industry—fostering healthcare transformation in recent times. The beginning of this transformation happened with the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed in 2009 to promote the meaningful use of healthcare information technology.

Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) defines four levels of Health Information Technology Interoperability:

1. Foundational Interoperability. This is the foundational level of interoperability in healthcare that allows one information system to receive data from another. This data does not require the user to interpret the data and is simply available for use

2. Structural Interoperability. This is at an intermediate level. Structural Interoperability defines the format of the data exchange—enabling the system that receives information to interpret the primary field-level data. This could include data such as patient records

3. Semantic Interoperability. This is at the highest level of interoperability, where information systems can fully exchange and decode the data received. Semantic interoperability allows the exchange of patient information among care providers through different sources to accelerate healthcare delivery efficiency.

4. Organizational Interoperability. This is the newest update added to the healthcare interoperability levels—adding a layer of non-technical factors. This integrates interoperability into organizational workflows—facilitating frictionless data exchange between care providers across organizations

Best Practices for Advancing Interoperability in Healthcare

Recent research by Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMMS) revealed that over 76% of the participants from leading healthcare organizations had adopted the structural and semantic levels of interoperability.

Another recent survey revealed that the paradigm shift towards population health, value-based care and evolving healthcare regulations are key driver of interoperability. Alternatively, data security and privacy, along with data standards, pose as major threats

How to Proceed with Implementation?

One of the crucial steps involved in healthcare interoperability is to identify the use cases effectively. Here are the questions you need to ask:

• What patient data do providers need and when?
• Will the care provider pull patient data from a different healthcare organization?
• Who is the patient’s care provider and is it defined?
• How should the provider be notified?

Considering these questions will help organizations determine the technical approach towards patient data exchange with external organizations. Answers to these critical questions help them identify the right solutions amongst care quality, point-to-point interfaces, direct messaging provider portals, and more.

Implementing interoperability in healthcare is not necessarily a simple task-it comes with its unique set of challenges in terms of various standards and technologies available. However, it is not just the technology alone. Some of the major other determining factors that result in failure include nonaligned incentives and other manual miscalculations. Beyond technology, interoperability as a concept is about enabling a specific use case of healthcare data exchange. As rightfully quoted, “Interoperability is just 20% technical, 80% of it is political and economical.”

To learn more about leveraging the latest healthcare technologies to maximize patient engagement, experience, and health outcomes, talk to our team.