Imagine this scenario: A patient is being admitted to a hospital somewhere in the country. There are multiple devices being connected to that single patient that generates massive volumes of data every few seconds.

These data are securely locked in data silos, and monitored by different stakeholders. However, the reality is that many of them are hesitant to share this information with the fellow healthcare community.

Fostering Interoperability

Data interoperability has been a major challenge in healthcare for many years; it results in increasing healthcare costs and having a negative impact on health outcomes until now.

To understand interoperability, we need to ask the following questions:

• What happens to the data collected?
• How does it integrate with other systems within the enterprise?
• Which of the stakeholders have access to these data and how can it be accessed?
• How well is the data interlinked to other data of a single patient?
• How well is this data interlinked to other data of similar patients in the same organization?
• Can data of a single patient be harnessed for a fully-integrated population health management system?

Millions of patients across the globe generate a vast amount of health data. Patients served by orthopedics, obstetrics and gynecology, behavioral health, radiology, oncology, cardiology, and many other departments, all connected to multiple devices generating sheer volumes of massive health data.

The State of Healthcare Interoperability

96% of Hospitals 78% of Physician offices Use Electronic health records for patient data	1 in 3 But fewer than 1 in 3 hospitals can share patient data with other providers	42% Named data privacy as the top challenge facing a smart community	4 in 10 Physicians exchange information electronically within the organization	1 in 10 Physicians exchange information electronically outside the organization

Today’s health IT challenges are not just affecting the providers but all healthcare stakeholders at large. Here are some of the challenges faced by the healthcare ecosystem.

• Consider that a staggering 31% of health centers report data security breaches.
• Care teams have difficulties in collaborating with patients and their families because since they cannot view the same EHR.
• Major amount of data is still missing, inaccurate, and non-standardized.
• Unnecessary duplication of tests, medications, and treatments adds to rising healthcare costs and complexities.
• Systems cannot seamlessly integrate data from various sources—even those from within the same organization.
• Health information analysis and related research are hindered by lack of clinical data warehouses as only clinical data silos exist.

The pressure of these growing challenges on healthcare systems continue to have a significant impact on the health outcomes. This is due to rising patient expectations in the world of consumerism, aging populations especially in emerging economies, the combined challenges of infectious diseases and the rising incidence of chronic illnesses among patient populations.

Powering Interoperability in Healthcare

Aims of Interoperability

Improved healthcare for everyone	More accurate and timely clinical decisions	Improved clinical workflows	Reduced operational complexities	Reduced costs

Means for Achieving Interoperability Standards

Information sharing (inside and outside the enterprise)

Health information exchange networks (HE crossenterprise document sharing profile)

End-to-end enterprise strategy – Data quality and consistency/dat a ubiquity

Standardized messaging formats – Standardized workflows and meaningful use

Data governance – Open interface – Cloud-based systems – Managed services

Optimizing the Use of Clinical Data

There has been rapid advancements in information technologies with immense growth in the Health IT landscape. It has brought several health IT organizations into the field, adding to the sheer volume and a wide variety of clinical information originating with different systems.

The onslaught of structured and unstructured data has increased complexities in delivering a complete and single view of patient care through enterprise-wide interoperability. Clinical data should be easy to search, retrieve, and interpret for providers’ needs in order to make timely medical interventions and facilitate optimal outcomes. It is made possible by adding meta data tags in Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) to provide a ncontext.

At SolvEdge, one of our primary goals is to make interoperability an ongoing journey with many routes by which it can be easily reached. Trusted by Fortune 500 healthcare brands, Hospitals, Physicians and millions of patients across the globe, our team of experienced analysts, technologists, Doctors, PhDs and other SMEs work together to maintain the highest interoperability standards throughout the data integration process.

To learn more about harnessing interoperability to enable digital transformation in your healthcare organization,
give us a shout!