In modern healthcare, digital solutions are essential for effective service delivery. However, they are significantly weakened if they are not connected and capable of sharing data and interacting with each other. Consequently, interoperability has become a cornerstone of digital development in healthcare. Necessary to extract maximum value from systems and deliver on digital’s promise, greater interoperability can transform quality of care, help to optimise resource use, and empower medical professionals.
But improving interoperability in healthcare is not without its challenges. At Omda, our extensive experience in the healthcare sector enables us to tackle these challenges head-on, delivering seamless solution connectivity and facilitating improved integration. Nowhere is this more evident than with our Connected Healthcare solutions. Designed to enhance collaboration across healthcare domains, they enable the safe and secure sharing of medical data.
Interoperability in healthcare – an overview
Today’s healthcare environment is evolving rapidly, with digital solutions becoming increasingly specialised and user-focused to deliver greater value. As a result, interoperability is a critical concern and central to the effective development and deployment of these solutions.
From Electronic Health Records and diagnostic imaging tools to user-oriented digital portals and pharmacy medication equipment, digital healthcare solutions generate, utilise and require significant amounts of data. And that data needs to be shareable. Healthcare systems that operate in silos result in fragmented care, duplicated data, delayed diagnosis and errors. They can impede access to critical patient data, prevent timely intervention and make it harder to coordinate care.
Interoperability resolves these issues by enabling systems to “speak the same language” and exchange data seamlessly. Ultimately, the aim is to ensure medical professionals have access to comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date patient information that is consistent across all digital solutions.
Healthcare interoperability by degree – a four-level process
Interoperability is not black and white – there are varying levels. In other words, healthcare solutions can be more or less interoperable and feature some degree of interoperability, complete systems integration, or none at all. To represent this idea, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) – a US-based non-profit organisation that seeks to promote digital reform in the healthcare sector – divides interoperability into four core levels.
- Foundational – establishes the requirements for one system or application to communicate and receive data from another.
- Structural – defines the data exchange format, providing context for the data.
- Semantic – adds a layer of understanding that ensures the exchanging systems interpret the data in the same way and have a shared understanding of that data.
- Organisational – accounts for governance, policy and legal considerations within an organisation, to ensure safe, secure and responsible data use.
General benefits of healthcare interoperability
When looking at the advantages associated with interoperability in healthcare, general healthcare benefits include:
- Better care coordination – consistency of data across digital solutions and the quick, accurate and reliable communication of that data enables medical professionals to better coordinate care. It reduces delays between data collection and medical intervention, prevents medical errors by providing access to up-to-date information and reduces the number of redundant tests and procedures healthcare professionals perform.
- Improved patient outcomes – greater healthcare data interoperability gives medical professionals access to more real-time data. By facilitating data sharing, integrated systems give healthcare professionals more information on which to make their decisions, resulting in more precise diagnoses, refined treatment plans and superior outcomes.
- Cost-savings – interoperability drives greater efficiency in critical healthcare processes and cuts costs for healthcare providers by eliminating administrative inefficiencies, enabling professionals to make quicker, safer decisions, and improving patient outcomes.
- Data-driven insights – when solutions are integrated, they deliver improved clinical support for decision-makers. They also enrich solution functionality, enabling solution providers to implement features that rely on data drawn from other systems. Patient-safety warning systems are an excellent example.
- Compliance and regulatory adherence – healthcare providers generate significant amounts of sensitive data and have a legal obligation to protect that data. Interoperability and integration projects can incorporate mechanisms and measures that ensure compliance with national and international standards for data sharing and security. This both minimises the provider’s exposure to legal risks and improves patient trust.
Benefits of interoperability to healthcare stakeholders
Interoperability directly impacts healthcare professionals and their ability to perform their roles while enhancing patient outcomes and their healthcare experience.
- Medical professionals – by ensuring data is available to medical professionals no matter what system they use, interoperability streamlines workflows and reduces the administrative burden placed on care providers. Less manual data entry eases the pressure on staff, while the ability to pull and push data from different solutions means they do not need to switch between solutions as frequently.
- Pharmacies – integrations that facilitate interoperability between hospital healthcare solutions and pharmacy systems simplify the process of filling prescriptions and manufacturing medication, while ensuring patient safety and minimising risks. Improved connectivity between systems can also play a crucial role in automating medication production, enabling systems used by prescribers to interact directly with robotic manufacturing units in the pharmacy.
- Patients – interoperability is essential if care providers are to improve patient access to their healthcare data and introduce patient-facing user portals that empower people to take a more active role in managing their health. For instance, facilitating self-monitoring and reporting functions via maternity patient portals. At the same time, integration reduces the need for patients to repeatedly submit personal information or health data.
- Administrative staff – most administrative tasks require data to be pulled from several systems. Whether organising billing or scheduling appointments, interoperable systems make processes quicker, more efficient and more accurate. This relieves administrative staff of relatively simple manual tasks and enables them to tackle more complex and demanding work that maximises their value to the organisation.
- Healthcare IT professionals – ensuring interoperability simplifies system maintenance for IT professionals working on diverse systems and attempting to integrate them. This creates more time for system optimisation and larger digital infrastructure projects.
Exploring examples of interoperability in healthcare
Interoperability is relevant to almost every aspect of digital healthcare development and management. Multidisciplinary care provision is now the norm in modern healthcare systems, and silos prevent this. As a result, system integration principles are applicable to diverse areas of healthcare. Examples include:
Connecting radiotherapy devices and analysis tools
In oncology, real-time data collected via radiotherapy diagnostic devices can be shared with advanced analysis tools to improve insight and facilitate more accurate and personalised treatment plans. By enhancing analytical capabilities and supporting clinical decision-making, this combination of technologies maximises treatment efficacy while minimising side effects. But it all depends on access to interoperable solutions.
Centralised Electronic Health Records (EHR)
Health records are often fragmented and dispersed across various databases, service areas and healthcare facilities. Healthcare data interoperability is critical for the creation of centralised Electronic Health Records that consolidate all patient data in a single record. Facilitating data sharing between new and old systems will allow medical professionals to access a patient’s complete medical history, no matter where that data was originally stored.
Real-time patient data exchange
In medical emergencies, the ability to respond quickly can be the difference between life and death. Interoperability enables real-time data exchange between various healthcare professionals, preventing treatment delays and enabling quick action. For instance, interoperability between in-vehicle emergency solutions utilised by paramedics and the systems used by emergency room doctors and nurses enables quicker, smoother and more effective handover.
Patient-facing solutions and portals
Digital solutions intended for use by patients can improve home treatment and provide healthcare organisations with a means of engaging individuals in their own care provision and taking a more proactive role in managing their health. They offer patients a digital portal through which they can interact with healthcare professionals, submit self-recorded health data and access health knowledge bases. However, this is only possible if the solutions are designed for better connectivity with other healthcare systems.
Omda Connected Healthcare features several industry-leading solutions with a focus on interoperability. They improve integration and connect diverse systems to improve healthcare outcomes and assist medical professionals.
The challenges of interoperability in healthcare
Greater interoperability in healthcare is not only achievable, it is essential. That does not mean there aren’t challenges.
- Data silos – silos are still commonplace in healthcare systems and isolated legacy solutions and systems that cannot communicate with one another are a real issue. Overcoming this challenge requires investment in new technologies and integrations, as well as a willingness to implement organisation-wide standardisation.
- Data complexity – healthcare data is diverse, complex and difficult to manage. It includes everything from structured patient demographic data to unstructured doctor’s notes and medical imaging. Ensuring this data can be shared requires solutions that prioritise interoperability and incorporate data standardisation features.
- Compliance with regulatory requirements – healthcare data must comply with a host of regulatory regimes and requirements and navigating that regulatory landscape is challenging. It requires specialist healthcare e-health expertise.
- Cost – investing in new solutions that emphasise connectivity or developing integrations for existing solutions requires upfront investment. However, it does drive cost efficiencies and reduce long-term expenditure.
Taking steps to improve interoperability
For organisations looking to improve interoperability in their systems, there are clear steps forward. While most strategies will need to be context-specific and based on an understanding of the unique challenges an organisation faces, these steps provide a solid foundation on which to build.
- Adopt standardised data formats – healthcare providers should adopt a standardised data format, such as FHIR (more on this below) and ensure all data is stored and exchanged in this format.
- Invest in interoperable solutions – moving forward, interoperability must be a prerequisite for any solution the organisation is considering investing in.
- Develop an interoperability solution – healthcare organisations must begin developing a comprehensive strategy that outlines how they aim to ensure data accessibility and consistency across all digital systems.
- Consider compliance – as part of this strategy, healthcare providers must detail how they intend to ensure compliance with relevant data protections and regulations.
- Work with trusted healthcare solution providers – healthcare organisations require digital solutions specifically designed with systems connectivity in mind. Omda recognises the importance of connected healthcare systems and delivers interoperable solutions that facilitate seamless data exchange and smarter ways of working.
The standards and regulations of healthcare interoperability
Healthcare organisations around the world currently utilise several data standards and are subject to different regulatory directives. Here is a quick guide to several of the most important.
- HL7 (Health Level 7) – a framework and set of internationally accepted standards for the exchange, integration and communication of electronic health data.
- FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) – developed as part of the HL7 framework, FHIR is designed to standardise healthcare data exchange. It benefits from being free, quick to learn, and relatively easy to implement.
- HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) – in the US, HIPAA is the key piece of legislation governing patient data exchange. It includes the security and privacy measures required to keep that data safe. Healthcare providers must ensure any interoperability efforts comply with these regulations.
- GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) – in the European Union, GDPR governs data collection, storage, management and exchange for all organisations, irrespective of industry. It includes strict data protection regulations and organisations face heavy financial penalties should they breach them. There is also an emphasis on individuals having greater access to the personal data organisations collect on them, ensuring healthcare providers need to be able to offer a degree of transparency and management.
- European Health Data Space – approved in April 2024, the European Health Data Space aims to improve healthcare data exchange across European national borders, facilitating better access to healthcare across the EU. At the same time, it hopes to make more data available for research and public health use. The project’s success depends on the standardisation of EHR systems across Europe. The standardised format is yet to be specified by the EU Commission.
Healthcare interoperability
At Omda, interoperability is central to our healthcare solution design and development. As we believe in the power of highly specialised solutions that focus on overcoming specific user challenges, we understand the need for connected systems. This is particularly evident in our Connected Healthcare solutions.
All our solutions prioritise secure data capture, storage and sharing. In doing so, they facilitate more streamlined workflows, enhanced clinical support and improved patient outcomes.
To learn more about Omda’s commitment to interoperability in digital healthcare systems, explore our Connected Healthcare solutions or reach out to the Omda team.
