Interoperability

Technological innovations and data-driven insights are making healthcare more collaborative and outcomes driven. Integrating patient data, devices and personal health data is a vast, ambitious undertaking—a challenge garnering much attention of late with the promises of cognitive computing, the Internet of Things, big data analytics, wireless wearable technology, and cloud platforms. In this webinar, Jeroen Tas, CEO of Connected Care and Health Informatics at Philips, will share his perspective and explain how the company is driving real change with its connected health ecosystem of new innovations along with its technology partners and healthcare experts. By attending this webinar, you’ll learn: •What’s on the horizon of the connected health frontier •How disruptive technologies like adaptive intelligence help improve patient care •Why an open, secure and built-for-healthcare cloud platform is imperative for connected health  

Learn how an effective customer relationship management (CRM) solution can empower healthcare organizations to attract more patients and delight them with their service experience. Hear how leading healthcare organizations are using CRM solutions to deliver more efficient and effective patient experiences, keeping both their patients and their business healthy and happy.

Penn Medicine chief information officer Mike Restuccia reflects on the year that was and glances ahead to 2017.

Tasked with accomplishing what takes some health systems $100 million with less $10 million, the IT shop conceived a new approach that saved $4.5 million a year and streamlined IT infrastructure management. 

By: Dr. Russell Leftwich, senior clinical advisor, interoperability, InterSystems Interoperability begins at home.  The most fundamental interoperability is the ability to access the data in your own system and use that data for care delivery.  There are two steps: first accessing the data and then viewing it in a way that you can most effectively and efficiently use it. A part of the promise that the HL7 FHIR standard is already delivering on is a new and easier way to access and use the data in your own organization’s EHR system.  FHIR is based on the same technology behind social media, e-commerce, travel sites, and other familiar web services many of us use every day.  It is easy for those familiar with this web development technology to begin building with FHIR. Because like these familiar web services FHIR is very adaptable to mobile devices, there is an early explosion of innovation of FHIR apps on mobile devices in a number of organizations. Most of these innovative apps are built around access to data in one’s own system and use fundamental data like patient demographics, vital signs, medications, and problem lists.  This has given clinicians customized views of their data and customized decision support for clinical care.  Clinicians have long desired these customizations, but such customized functions were prohibitively expensive to develop as add-ons for individual EHR implementations. Notable examples of such apps include a pediatric growth chart app already in use in a number of institutions and an app that displays an individual’s blood pressure over time and that is easily implemented in different EHR systems. There are also simple decision support apps being deployed that are invoked by a medication order (prescription) and can show alternative medications based on cost or formulary restrictions.  Decision support apps under development with expectation that they can be implemented within weeks identify patients at the point of care at risk for conditions like Zika virus and associated complications.  It is already apparent that like the new functions that have appeared with each version of a smart phone, the development cycles of the FHIR standard will bring new capabilities and value to healthcare every few months. We know we didn’t have to wait for smartphone-5 to start seeing innovation, and the same is true of HL7 FHIR.   Register for Dr. Leftwich’s upcoming webinar, "Three Apps Fan the Flames as HL7 FHIR Spreads," at http://www.intersystems.com/who-we-are/events/event/three-apps-fan-flames-hl7-fhir-spreads/

Achieving interoperability across boundaries and connecting providers for collaboration is a long process. Here are a few examples of customers where our interoperability technology is improving care and outcomes.

"As I've said many times, one of the great challenges we have is that the 2015 Edition final rule has an enormous scope extending beyond meaningful use with the notion that it can be coupled to every government healthcare IT program," writes John Halamka, MD.  

The standard bodes well for future collaborative care models, even if it’s still in its infancy.

HIMSS Executive Vice President Carla Smith and PCHA EVP Patricia Mechael caution against applying the phrase to all digital health apps and tools. Instead, executives and innovators should work to align emerging technologies with consumer demand.

The answer to that question, says Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John Halamka, MD, is that we need the right amount of the right regulation and legislation.