Health Information Exchange (HIE)

Interoperability group recommends that IT developers standardize features to manage clinical messages and their attachments.

Black Book Report shows that 70 percent of hospitals say data from outside providers is missing from their systems' workflows.

Kansas Health Information Network forwards all information, including notes and reports, to patients via a portal. 

HIE could be a 'silver bullet' to care improvement, but we're still a long way off from interoperability says one expert – who proposes more inclusive, less restrictive ways to share information.  

Experts from the Advisory Board weigh in on progress made during the last 12 months, take a look at how widespread health data exchange can enable hospitals to better serve patients and address lingering questions about interoperability. 

"Data is the currency of the next century," says Brian Ahier. And nowhere are health data and data management processes discussed, analyzed and examined more than at the HIMSS Annual Conference and Exhibition.

Acknowledgement of the value of interoperability – and the desire to implement it – are seemingly widespread in healthcare. So why is the industry still so short of achieving it?

The path to interoperability has been a circuitous one over the past 13 years, veering off in directions that weren't anticipated when the concept became an industry-wide initiative in 2004.

The electronic health record maker has built out its suite to enable integration with third-party apps and competing EHR systems, its chief executive said. 

DirectTrust CEO David Kibbe, MD, says the platform is helping connect 'hundreds of different vendors' EHR, PHR and other IT products,' as clinicians are coming up with new and innovative ways to use it.