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The abundance of proprietary protocols and interfaces that restrict or prohibit healthcare data exchange take a huge toll on productivity. Health systems and providers should demand better interoperability.
Many industries have harnessed the power of technology to improve outcomes and reduce costs, but despite continued technological advances, health care overall has experienced negative productivity over the past decade. Some organizations are doing better than others. To determine where their organizations might ñt into this scenario, healthcare leaders should consider three questions:
* Does the technology within our health system help clinicians excel in their jobs and achieve the best possible outcomes for patients?
* Does technology function seamlessly in the background, allowing streamlined operations and freeing care teams to return to the patient bedside?
* Have we optimized the return on our technology investments?
Chances are that most health system leaders' answers are closer to "not exactly" than a resounding "yes."
Unfortunately, the vast majority of medical devices, electronic health records (EHRs). and other IT systems lack interoperability-i.e., the ability to seamlessly share and use information across multiple technologies.
Perhaps more precisely, they lack a common, built-in system that can exchange information across vendors, settings, and device types. Various systems and equipment typically are purchased from different manufacturers, and each comes with its own proprietary interface technology.
As a result, hospitals must spend time and money-both scarce resources-settingup each technology in a different way. instead of being able to rely on a consistent means of connectivity. Moreover, hospitals often must invest in separate "middleware" systems to pull together all these disparate pieces of technology to feed data from bedside devices to EHRs, data warehouses, and other applications that aid in clinical decision making, research, and analytics. Many bedside devices, especially older ones, don't even connect; they require manual reading and data entry. The nation's largest health systems employ thousands of people dedicated to dealing with what one system dubs "non-interoperability." The exhibit below right depicts the current state of data flow.
Rethinking the Interoperability Challenge
The current lack of interoperability can compromise patient safety, undermine care quality and outcomes, contribute to clinician fatigue, and waste billions of dollars annually. It also hinders progress toward achieving goals for population health management and precision medicine. Worse...