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Healthcare
Table of Contents
The healthcare industry is about providing care for patients in the first place and implies exchanging sensitive, personal patient information. It means that patient records, lab results, and treatment plans should be transferred in a timely manner and interpreted in the right way.
A recent World Health Organization report shows that data-informed healthcare decisions improve treatment outcomes by 30%. As healthcare providers look for ways to improve patient care effectively, interoperability becomes the new standard for the industry. Below you'll see what principles and approaches can make this happen.
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) defines interoperability in healthcare as 'the ability of different information systems, devices, and applications (systems) to access, exchange data, integrate, and cooperatively use data in a coordinated manner, within and across organizational, regional, and national boundaries, to provide timely and seamless portability of information and optimize the health of individuals and populations globally.'
Simply put, interoperability in healthcare is the ability to exchange, interpret, and use data between different healthcare systems, devices, and applications. This way, all providers work in one ecosystem, improving the industry's overall efficiency.
Transferring patient data, clinical and administrative information quickly and correctly is beneficial for both patients and providers.Imagine a patient waiting for a lab test result. With shared clinical records, they don't need to wait for the result themselves and get a new appointment with the doctor.
For instance, the doctor submits a request using Electronic Medical Records (EMR). A standardized request is sent to a laboratory, which sends a report back to the EMR, and the doctor reviews the lab test results and provides answers and recommendations to the patient.
A unified and collaborative healthcare ecosystem is created when different health information systems communicate effectively, regardless of their developers, locations, or technologies.
Exchanged information is the basic condition for medical systems' functionality. Examples of healthcare interoperability software include Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), Electronic Health Records/Electronic Medical Records (EHR/EMR), Laboratory Information Systems (LIS), Practice Management Systems (PMS), Patient Administration Systems (PAS), remote monitoring, and pharmacy data sharing.
Let's briefly overview how each system works with patient data.
These systems help manage patient data, treatment plans, and administrative tasks within a hospital setting. Data can be exchanged seamlessly between different departments, improving workflow and eliminating errors.
These are secure platforms for sharing patient data between healthcare providers, labs, pharmacies, and insurers. This leads to better-informed decisions and a reduction in duplicate tests. Studies show that HIEs can reduce unnecessary hospital admissions, reduce costs, and increase capacity in healthcare institutions.
EHR and EMR systems allow doctors, nurses, and specialists to access and update patient records in real-time, reducing duplication, documentation errors, and waiting time. A study by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) proved that integrating EHRs reduces administrative tasks by 50%.
This software provides healthcare interoperability by managing workflow and integrating lab results into a patient's health record. All patient tests and processes are stored and managed in one place and can be securely shared with healthcare providers when needed. These measures reduce turnaround times, leading to faster diagnoses and treatment decisions.
This software streamlines day-to-day operations in medical practice: it allows users to schedule appointments with the doctor, shows patient demographics, synchronizes insurance client data, performs billing tasks, and generates reports.
Healthcare organizations use this software to replace paperwork with structured, digital patient data management. These systems process patient registration, admission, and transfer processes. At the same time, they ensure the data is secure and comply with healthcare regulations.
Another example of interoperability in healthcare is real-time virtual consultations and health monitoring. Telemedicine apps help to address health issues in a timely manner and reduce hospital work overload. Moreover, they reduce readmissions and emergency department visits.
Pharmacies can benefit from interoperability by accessing prescription histories via special pharmacy software. This enhances the accurate dispensing of medications and patient safety. By leveraging these systems for healthcare interoperability, medical professionals can provide more coordinated and data-based patient care.
Interoperability works on several layers and affects all the stakeholders engaged in healthcare processes: patients, healthcare professionals like clinicians, laboratory specialists, emergency services, institutional healthcare providers from hospitals to insurance companies, and governmental health organizations.
Let's explore how different groups benefit from healthcare data interoperability.
Patients are the first to benefit from enhanced exchange of medical data. Healthcare interoperability means easier access to their medical records, greater engagement in their own treatment, and more personalized care, all of which result in improved health outcomes.
A study states that access to clinical notes may encourage patients to be more engaged in their own healthcare. When individuals have access to their medical history, test results, care plans, and prescriptions, they feel more responsible and actively participate in treatment. Information exchange can happen via patient portal applications such as MyChart, or healthcare mobile apps, which allow individuals to view lab results, schedule appointments, and even message their doctors.
Patients can securely share their Electronic Health Records (EHRs) with specialists, new healthcare providers, or family members with just a few clicks. This reduces the risk of errors or omissions when patients are asked to recall medical information, as well as unnecessary paperwork.
When all providers have access to up-to-date medical records, the risk of duplicated tests, medication conflicts, and treatment errors reduces drastically. A study found that participation in the Health Information Exchange (HIE) can identify high-risk medication use that clinicians may not have detected without clinical data exchange.
Another real-life example is individuals with multiple chronic diseases whose treatment is more complex, including more checkups, hospitalizations, and prescriptions.
In urgent situations, interoperability empowers emergency teams with a patient's medical history, including allergies, medications, and pre-existing conditions. This may be crucial for faster, life-saving interventions.
Interoperability is a game-changer for specialists relying on comprehensive patient histories to diagnose accurately.
Consider an oncologist who needs to offer a treatment plan for a new patient. Access to a patient's previous scans, lab results, and treatment history from other providers ensures a more informed and timely treatment plan.
Interoperability in healthcare goes beyond exchanging medical records. It also includes connecting to decision-support systems, as was the case in the COVID-19 pandemic. Doctors worldwide could access real-time data on emerging symptoms and treatment, as well as vaccine developments, which improved their ability to respond to the crisis.
Some solutions, like IBM Watson Health, use AI tools to analyze medical records and suggest diagnoses and treatment plans tailored to patients' specific needs.
Interoperability reduces the hours healthcare professionals spend on paperwork, record transfers, and redundant data entry. Thus, a study from the American Medical Association (AMA) found that EHR systems help doctors avoid burnout caused by administrative burden.
Healthcare is a team effort. Data interoperability strengthens collaboration between physicians, administrators, pharmacists, and other specialists. For example, a patient recovering from surgery may need follow-up care from multiple professionals: a surgeon, a physical therapist, and a primary care physician. To avoid conflicting prescriptions, they can all address up-to-date information via a connected system.
Clinics and hospitals often struggle with redundant paperwork and fragmented patient data. This inevitably leads to inefficiencies and delays. Interoperability helps healthcare institutions streamline workflows, reduce errors, and cut costs. For instance, the Mayo Clinic provides doctors with comprehensive patient data, reducing unnecessary tests and speeding up diagnoses. Insurance companies can also save costs thanks to reduced duplicates in testing and earlier disease diagnosis.
When data can move seamlessly between departments and facilities, it saves effort on administrative tasks and leaves more time for patient care. Let's say a patient in critical condition is being transferred between emergency medical services and the emergency department in a hospital. Timely access to data can save a person's life.
Integrated healthcare information enables different providers to work together. With a treatment plan available to all healthcare providers, patients need fewer consultations and hospital admissions.
When healthcare providers have seamless access to patient data, they can make informed decisions that lead to better outcomes and smarter resource allocation. For example, if a hospital uses an integrated health information system, it can identify trends in patient data for a chronic disease and proactively offer early prevention treatment. This proactive approach not only improves patient health but also reduces hospital admission.
Interoperability in healthcare also reduces unnecessary medical procedures, like laboratory testing.
Implementing an EHR-based alert system, like the one implemented by the Geisinger Health System, can result in a 41% decrease in unnecessary patient admissions in six months. Doctors are notified about tests, saving resources both for laboratories and patients.
Similarly, insurance companies benefit from real-time access to patient records, which prevents fraud and reduces the number of disputed insurance claims.
Medical data cannot be shared across different healthcare institutions without strict legal and security requirements. Standardized data-sharing protocols help providers meet these requirements. Encrypting data and strict access controls are just a few principles in exchanging healthcare data.
For instance, in the United States, patient data is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), whether stored in apps or elsewhere. However, this still allows access for care coordination when necessary. Similarly, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union ensures that patients consent to institutions sharing their data for improved care while keeping security measures.
Governments use clusters of health data to track disease outbreaks, improve policy decisions, and optimize allocation of healthcare services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments wehealthcare service allocation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments trackedre tracking infection rates with real-time data, which helped them distribute vaccines efficiently.
For science organizations and medical universities, anonymized health records from individuals help with research. For example, UK Biobank securely collects medical records from half a million people; these datasets allow perform the UK Biobank securely collects medical records from half a million people; these datasets allow for performing more informed research, reveal genetic connections using more informed research, reveal genetic connection to diseases, and develop specific treatments.
Overall, integrated health information helps institutions better understand the public demand for health services and meet their citizens' needs.
If you're thinking about how to improve interoperability in healthcare, there are several levels of action to consider. Each plays a unique role in data exchange:
Each level functions according to its standards; together, they create a common 'code' for how information is formatted, transmitted, secured, and interpreted, safeguarding healthcare providers from possible errors.
Foundational interoperability is the most superficial level of healthcare interoperability. It is responsible for system connectivity and implies that systems exchange data without deep integration. The recipient system displays the data but does not interpret it.
Examples of this level of interoperability include:
This is a more complex step that deals with the structure and format of data exchange. It provides parsing, integrity, and correct data recognition between health information systems. For this purpose, it uses international data formats and standards (like HL7 and XML). Examples of healthcare standards on the structural level are:
It's the next step, where different digital health systems can interpret data in a unified way. It becomes possible thanks to common data models and ontologies, ensuring that clinical terminology is consistent and clear.
Examples of semantic healthcare interoperability include:
This is the level where different healthcare providers and institutions create one ecosystem. They share regulatory frameworks, protocols, and governance models, not only to exchange clinical data, but to enhance quality of patient care and compliance with national and international health regulations.
Processes are improved with the help of the following standards:
Despite a great potential to improve patient care, some barriers to interoperability in healthcare may arise. The reasons lie in technical, financial, regulatory, and cultural factors.
Healthcare organizations rely on multiple systems from different vendors, but some of them might be outdated or not designed to communicate with each other. This causes inconsistent data exchange.
Possible solution: upgrade to modern systems and adopt common structural interoperable standards like FHIR.
Useful as it is, healthcare data interoperability may put patient data at risk. Additionally, you need to navigate data governance and privacy concerns, like compliance with HIPAA and GDPR guidelines.
Possible solution: to avoid data breaches and unauthorized access, implement advanced encryption, technologies like blockchain, and strict access controls.
Adopting interoperable systems from scratch, upgrading existing systems or switching to new ones is most often complex and costly. It requires not only financial resources, but also staff training and modernizing infrastructure.
Possible solutions:
Some organizations end up with lack of interoperability for fear of disrupting existing workflows. Transitioning to a new interoperable system requires training and optimizing activities among staff.
Possible solution: to encourage cultural change and better adoption, provide comprehensive training for staff and explain benefits of the system clearly.
Interoperability initiatives may cause conflicting reactions from tech vendors, insurers, and policymakers, as they all have different business models and goals. Some of them may prefer to run systems that do not share any data with other healthcare providers, keeping their clients solely to themselves.
Possible solution: it mostly lies in initiatives from the industry and governmental sides. Regulations and financial incentives can encourage vendors to cooperate and help data interoperability expand.
There's no 'silver bullet' approach to adopting interoperability. Yet, some initiatives can help on this journey: adopting new standards and technologies, strengthening cybersecurity and privacy measures, training staff, and promoting cooperation between healthcare providers.
Further technology breakthroughs in AI and blockchain will encourage healthcare providers to evolve and bring medical innovations and smarter solutions to market at lower costs.
If you wish to make the waves in the industry and keep up with the tech trends, choose NEKLO as your software development partner!
US-based and operating globally, NEKLO spearheads digital transformation initiatives for businesses worldwide. We deliver software solutions complying with your market and legislation.
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