Interoperability: Resources

A Buyer's Guide to

Interoperability

What is solution interoperability?

Solution interoperability is the ability of different healthcare industry software systems, devices, and applications to communicate with each other, seamlessly exchange data and information, and work together in a coordinated fashion. It is the central nervous system that powers health system business objectives and strategy.

Until relatively recently, interoperability was largely an IT function with a point-to-point approach. Policy changes like the 2014 HITEC Act and the 2016 21st Century Cures Act established broader data sharing standards and created the necessary regulatory framework to support effective and secure information sharing. In 2020, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) issued the Cures Act Final Rule, which clarified and enforced regulations related to information sharing among healthcare organizations and patients’ access to their electronic health data.

Four key stages of the solution interoperability data journey

Stage	Overview	Examples
Exchange	The movement of data from one system to another, including both external sources and sources within a health system’s vendor ecosystem.	API marketplace vendors, data exchange platforms, health information exchanges, direct messaging.
Translate	Translation, standardization, and normalization of data into a structure and language that is understandable and usable across sources.	Natural language processing (NLP), translation engines, normalization, structuring unstructured data
Utilize	Organization, aggregation, and reporting of accurate and credible data in a way that is useful for health system providers administrators. Empowers organization to effectively use it	Reporting, insights generation, workflow integration, deduplication, alerts, notifications, longitudinal patient view

Strategic interoperability decisions that health systems make now will reverberate for years to come. Sluggish investment is not an option-health systems need to accelerate the pace of interoperability advancements to stay relevant and outpace competitors in growth, efficiency, and resiliency.

—Meagan Rose
Senior Director of Interoperability

The case for solution interoperability

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, health systems rushed to implement a wide variety of solutions to meet rapidly changing digital and virtual care needs. Today, these expanded solution ecosystems are disjointed, expensive, and difficult to maintain.

Health systems should focus on integrating these ecosystems to maximize returns on their investments, streamline user experiences, reduce costs, improve clinical outcomes, and drive operational efficiency.

Financial

Interoperability adds value and delivers savings. Health systems (assuming $2.2 billion yearly NPR) with high interoperability may see as much as $444 million in additional incremental value over five years compared to health systems with low interoperability.

Highly interoperable health systems can also expect an additional $12 million in incremental IT savings over five years.

Operational efficiency

Low interoperability is costly. While highly interoperable organizations are more likely to identify new ways to boost operational efficiency and save time on routine tasks, many of these opportunities are unavailable to organizations with low interoperability. When health systems forgo necessary investment into transformational interoperability-driven capabilities, the potential costs include:

Multimodal data collection, including connected biometric data feeds as well as patient reported outcomes

Configurable alerts to trigger interventions and virtual visits

Engaging patient education and intelligent virtual coaching

Integrations with EHRs, call systems, physician ordering solutions, and other technologies to simplify enrollment, billing, and evaluation

Analytics, such as intuitive dashboards, automated care plans, and other clinical decision supports.

Clinical outcomes and patient experience

High interoperability improves outcomes. The overwhelming majority of physicians who engage in health information exchange see improvements in quality of care and patient safety, along with lower 30-day readmission rates. The patient experience also improves, with more opportunities for personalized care and more meaningful patient engagement.

Conversely, low interoperability causes clinical outcomes to suffer. Scattered and inaccessible patient information creates a more fragmented care experience, and inefficient care processes can increase administrative burdens, leading to longer wait times and avoidable data entry errors. Without ready access to real-time patient data, care coordination becomes more difficult. The patient experience is also less personalized, with fewer opportunities for patients to engage in their care or receive the information they need to feel empowered to make health decisions.

What good looks like across the data interoperability journey

Exchange

Health systems should have the ability to transfer data quickly and easily among all source systems, both internal and external, with minimal technical build or maintenance. Key capabilities include:

Able to transfer data quickly across various internal and external sources of data including EMRs, pop health, digital health tools, clinical, claims, and operational sources
Exchanging real-time data with internal and external sources
Leveraging a unified exchange/type-agnostic network

Translate

Health systems should have the ability to enhance the quality of their data through translating data across different sources and ontologies into a single usable language and structure. Key capabilities include:

Normalizing data by harmonizing and converting data from various formats and structures into a singular, consistent schema or format
Using natural language processing to analyze and derive meaning from unstructured data in free-text format and organize free text
Structuring data from unstructured sources such as imaging, pathology notes, and radiology reports

Utilize

Health systems should have the ability to organize, aggregate, and report useful information in an accurate and credible way to improve clinical and operational outcomes. Key capabilities include:

Reporting and insights generation derived from data across internal and external sources
Access and utilization of a longitudinal patient record
Clinician workflow integration of aggregated data enabling efficiency through workflow management, insights, alerts, and notifications

Organizing for interoperability success

Organizations with the most agile interoperability capabilities are best positioned to achieve business and strategic objectives. Four big moves that build toward organizational success in interoperability include:

Refine your system’s solution ecosystem

Assess the capabilities of your current solution vendors, and complete application rationalization to reduce technical debt and maximize value achieved from each partnership
Focus efforts on deepening the integration with the key partner vendors in your refined partner ecosystem

Design your future state interoperability architectural blueprint

Map out your organization’s current state business data needs, priorities, tools and capabilities
Plan your future data needs and the best connectivity infrastructure to support those needs

Band Together

Recognize that no single health system alone can solve for this industry-wide gap
Prioritize collective action by committing to data standards and joining industry coalitions and utilities that are solving for interoperability in a collective way
Monitor legislation and lobby for government action

Enterprise Strategic Alignment

Align your organization’s enterprise strategic roadmap and governance with your blueprint and future ecosystem designs
Engage stakeholders from every area of the business to gather interoperability requirements, identify current capabilities and gaps, and develop the path forward

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Buyer's Guide

Contents

A Buyer's Guide to

Interoperability

Four key stages of the solution interoperability data journey

Financial

Operational efficiency

What good looks like across the data interoperability journey

Organizing for interoperability success

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