Interoperability Is Revolutionizing Patient Care: How Easy Data Exchange Improves Patient Care and Outcomes

Imagine a future where healthcare professionals can seamlessly access their patients' comprehensive medical histories with just a few clicks. A future where sharing data between providers, insurers, and researchers is effortless, and where this data can be used to significantly enhance the quality, efficiency, and affordability of patient care.

Welcome to the world of healthcare interoperability - a world that's rapidly becoming a reality thanks to advancements in technology and growing recognition of its importance. As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, interoperability is emerging as a critical factor in improving patient outcomes, reducing costs, and enhancing the overall quality of care. It's a world that promises to transform the way healthcare professionals work together, empowering them to provide better, more informed care while also streamlining processes and reducing administrative burdens.

This blog post explores the concept of healthcare interoperability, its significance, and its adoption by the healthcare industry. It delves into real-world examples of interoperability, tackles remaining challenges, and highlights the advantages that healthcare providers, payers, and patients can anticipate from a more integrated and cooperative approach to care.

The key to interoperability: a win-win for all stakeholders 

Interoperability in healthcare is a win-win situation for healthcare executives, providers, and patients. By enabling secure data exchange, interoperability can deliver many benefits.

• Continuity of care: Interoperability ensures that patient information is accessible to authorized healthcare providers across different settings, enabling them to make informed decisions and provide coordinated care. 
• Patient safety: Interoperability enables accurate and timely exchange of critical information, reducing the risk of medical errors, adverse drug events, and duplicate tests. For instance, a patient prescribed a new medication can have their prescription checked against their existing medications and allergies by an interoperable system, which can alert the prescriber and the pharmacist of any potential interactions or contraindications.
• Efficiency and cost savings: Interoperability eliminates the need for manual data entry and redundant tests, which streamlines workflows, saves time, and reduces healthcare costs. For example, a patient who undergoes a diagnostic imaging test at one facility can have their results shared electronically with another facility, avoiding the need for repeating the test or transporting the images physically.

Trailblazers in healthcare interoperability: how it’s done right

In today’s healthcare landscape, there are many examples of successful interoperability in action. Three such examples are the eHealth Exchange, the Da Vinci Project, and the SMART on FHIR systems. These initiatives are pivotal, as they represent a significant advancement in the field of health information exchange, having the potential to revolutionize the way that healthcare data is accessed and used.

Each system uses the FHIR standard for data exchange, which enables secure and standardized sharing of healthcare data between different systems and applications. FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a widely supported standard that simplifies healthcare data exchange.

Let's take a closer look at each of these systems and see what they have to offer.

The eHealth Exchange is a nationwide network that leverages FHIR to connect diverse health care organizations and agencies, such as large provider networks, hospitals, pharmacies, regional health information exchanges, and federal agencies. It covers all 50 states in the US and serves 100 million patients, representing about 30% of the population. It handles more than 50 million transactions per month, including clinical summaries, lab results, medication histories, immunization records, and disability determinations. It is governed by a non-profit cooperative of its members, who collaborate to develop and maintain the network’s vision, strategy, and operations.

The Da Vinci Project is an initiative that aims to improve value-based care by developing and promoting FHIR-based solutions for quality measurement, coverage discovery, prior authorization, and patient cost transparency. Value-based care is a model of healthcare delivery that focuses on the quality and outcomes of care, rather than the volume and cost of services. The Da Vinci Project has identified 18 use cases that demonstrate how FHIR can support value-based care, and creates implementation guides, reference implementations, and testing tools for each use case. The project also collaborates with other FHIR accelerators and industry stakeholders to promote interoperability and alignment across value-based care initiatives.

SMART on FHIR is a way of integrating user-friendly applications with health data that are stored and exchanged using FHIR. SMART is a framework that enables applications to access and use health data from different sources in a secure and standardized way. SMART on FHIR combines the features of both SMART and FHIR to provide a common method for obtaining authentication and authorization to a FHIR repository, restricting access to resources associated with the user, and granting applications access to a limited set of data by using SMART clinical scopes. With SMART on FHIR, users can access and use their health data from different sources and applications in a consistent and convenient way.

Four opportunities for interoperability improvement in the healthcare industry

Interoperability comes with undeniable benefits, but there are still challenges that many healthcare settings face in its implementation, preventing it from reaching its full potential. 

While interoperability is not yet a reality for all healthcare settings, these opportunities for growth offer a glimpse of its bright future.

1. Gaps in coordination: There is no universal agreement on how to share health data among different healthcare organizations and systems. There are many different methods, standards, and protocols for data exchange, like HL7, FHIR, DICOM, and IHE. However, these standards are not always implemented consistently or correctly, and some organizations may resist changing their existing systems or workflows. This leads to fragmentation, inconsistency, and duplication of data, which hinders interoperability and data quality.
2. Health data fusion: There is an enormous amount of health data generated from various sources, such as EHRs, electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices, wearables, mobile apps, and more. These data are often stored in different formats, structures, and locations, making it difficult to access and integrate them. Moreover, these data may contain irrelevant, redundant, or inaccurate information that can overload the systems and users. Therefore, it is important to have a system that can manage, filter, and standardize the data for interoperability purposes.
3. A pricey venture: Implementing interoperable solutions can be expensive and time-consuming for healthcare organizations. They may need to purchase new hardware and software, integrate them with their existing systems, train their staff to use them effectively and maintain them regularly. They may also face legal or contractual barriers that prevent them from sharing data with other organizations or systems. These costs may outweigh the benefits of interoperability for some organizations, especially small or rural ones with limited resources and capabilities.
4. Confidentiality and protection: Sharing health data risks compromising the privacy and security of the patients and the organizations. Health data are sensitive and personal information that needs to be protected from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. However, as more data is exchanged among different systems and networks, the risk of data breaches, cyberattacks, or human errors increases. Therefore, it is essential to have a robust system to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the data while complying with the relevant laws and regulations, such as HIPAA or GDPR.

The main takeaway

Interoperability is essential for creating a truly connected and patient-centered healthcare system. 

Healthcare interoperability is the ability of different healthcare systems to communicate with each other and share data. It is revolutionizing the way healthcare is delivered, helping to improve patient care, reduce administrative and healthcare costs, and increase patient engagement - a win-win for patients, providers, and payers. 

References:

1. https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/factsheets/onc_interoperabilityfactsheet.pdf
2. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/da-vinci-project-to-advance-value-based-care-through-the-use-of-hl7-data-sharing-resources-300707249.html
3. https://ehealthexchange.org/
4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997036/
5. https://www.carecloud.com/continuum/overcome-barriers-to-apis-and-interoperability/