Why Interoperability is the Key to Digital Health Success
Interoperability refers to the ability of exchanging data among multiple healthcare systems (hospitals, clinics, insurance companies & labs etc.) and use that data in a co-ordinated manner.
It follows standards like CCDA, HL7, FHIR & EDI to ensure data transmission happens in a generic manner. The below are the benefits of interoperability in healthcare ecosystem.
Seamless Data Exchange
Interoperability helps healthcare systems like hospitals & insurance companies to transfer data seamlessly and that data can be used for right decision making at the right time & that ensures patient gets the value based care.
Ensure compliance and incentives
Interoperability in healthcare follows healthcare standards like HL7 & FHIR which is a mandate from healthcare bodies like ONC & HIPAA. It ensures that compliance is being followed and providers are eligible for incentives from the federal/state governments.
Improved patient outcomes
Interoperability helps in creating a centralized proof of patient health data and that data helps in more accurate diagnosis and personalized treatments. This continuity in care improves patient safety and increases overall result based outcomes.
Efficiency improvement
Interoperability helps in reducing manual data entries into the systems & that directly reduces the administrative burden of providers. This directly increase the efficiency by lowering the administrative cost.
Enabling Innovation
Interoperability helps in creating generic data models that helps AI for better predictive analysis, disease identification & population health management.
Empowered Patients
Interoperability provides patients to better control their data. This helps patients to share their data among multiple providers & helps to better track their health. It helps patients suffering from chronic disease to better engage & self-assess themselves.